Glass Castle
by fanartist
Summary: (Feb.2013) I realized that this is a terrible fanfic. [KakaSaku] ON HIATUS
1. Reunion

(April 2013) Editing this fic... No promises on updates

—

**Chapter I: Reunion**

"Good morning, Sakura-chan!" cried a blond jounin, frantically waving an arm above his head once he spotted his childhood crush loitering about the North Gate.

"Good morning Naruto!" the girl replied cheerfully. Something she would not have done five or six years ago. Then again, thumbing your nose at six years worth of turmoil, memories and life was not exactly something Team Seven would do.

The four had not been able to meet as a whole Team Seven for many months, but their concern and friendship for one another never faded. Which was why the little brat still greeted her the same way every time they passed each other by chance.

Well… He wasn't little anymore, Sakura thought, curling a lock of hair behind her ear, listening as Naruto chattered excitedly about one of his previous missions. In fact, she was now the shortest among the former members of Team Seven. She couldn't even punch Naruto properly no matter what kind of half-witted observation or remark he made. He was tall; as tall—maybe even taller—as Sasuke.

But Kakashi-sensei was still the tallest.

"Naruto, what are you doing here?" Sakura finally asked noting that Naruto had made himself comfortable on the steps of the gate. She was called very suddenly on a B Rank mission, which was why she had been at the gate in the first place. However, she never found out who would accompany her, and the last person she thought would accompany her was a jounin. Maybe Godaime-sama decided to slap together the original Team Seven.

Sure enough, Sasuke's appearance confirmed her suspicions and the overly-belated appearance of the fourth member solidified it.

"Yo."

"_You're late!_"

—

At the age of eighteen, things had changed rapidly for the three. Naruto and Sasuke had become jounins quite recently while Sakura decided settle at her current Chuunin status. While the blonde was still training furiously to become Hokage—and still hadn't changed his consistent diet of ramen for that matter—Sasuke had expressed interest in becoming a member of the ANBU, which also meant that Naruto would set sights on the same goal. As usual, Naruto carried most of the conversation as they waited for their client while Sasuke butted in just to heat up his rival.

Sakura wondered what Kakashi had been doing during those six years. The man's routine had probably never changed until they were under his care, so she wondered what he would do after he failed another group of gennin candidates in his traditional fashion. Her eyes wandered to her former teacher. Though he looked like he was reading _that _book, he was probably eavesdropping on their conversation. After all, they were still the only students he had acknowledged as gennins. It was at that moment that Sakura realized the reason Tsunade-sama had arranged the meeting point so early was to make sure that Kakashi would arrive before their client.

"…And I still couldn't beat that Obaa-san," Naruto sulked as he ended his anecdote about his latest challenge against Godaime.

"Ne, ne, Sakura-chan!" the boy swiveled around to Sakura before Sasuke could slip in a snide remark, "I heard that you were gonna be a medic-nin!" Sasuke raised an eyebrow. This was the first time he heard such news.

Sakura had no time to confirm his statement when the three were approached by a rather… Big-boned man accompanied by the Hokage.

"This is the feudal lord of the Lightning Country. He has requested for protection after he became the target of a few radical groups." Tsunade wore a thinly masked desire on her face to rid this man from her presence. Not that anyone couldn't understand. Sakura couldn't if the look on his face was an unfortunate product of genetics or if his face really was perpetually leering.

"He looks like Gama-Bunta," Naruto mumbled. Sakura muffled a giggle and Sasuke smirked. The countenance of their client was, indeed, comparable to the toad Naruto summoned sporadically in his youth. But uglier, Sakura thought.

"I trust that you will provide me with the best protection the Hidden Leaf Village has to offer." Naruto's mouth had assumed an unnatural angle at the man's toad-like voice. He was digging deep to his meager reservoir of self-control to stifle his laughter.

Another word would have broken his tentative resolve, but fortunately the client decided to take his time and walked up to survey the four.

The man was of the dumpy sort, being a whole foot shorter than Sasuke, to whom he seemed to express a general distaste. He surveyed Naruto's strangely strained expression and quaking body quizzically.

Stopping in front of Sakura, his bulging eyes widened slightly and to Sakura's (and Naruto's) utter disgust, his amphibious eyes curved in delight as he scrutinized her. It was bad enough that she was in his visual range, but this was—

"So I guess we're off!" Kakashi had suddenly stepped between the client and Sakura, calling out to Tsunade. He reached over and took the scroll from her as froggish eyes glared at the masked man reading from the roll of paper. A sleepy eye met with an inhumanly attentive-looking pair. Kakashi merely laughed and waved back good-naturedly.

Sakura sighed in relief as the man's ample derriere disappeared into his carriage. Sasuke was supporting Naruto's weight as the latter gripped the former's shoulder for support, laughing as silently as he could behind Sasuke. The dark-eyed boy let loose a shaky sigh, signifying that he was trying not to join his hyperactive teammate.

"Get a grip, dobe," Sasuke attempted to sound annoyed as he hit the fox-boy over the head. It didn't produce the desired effect, breaking Naruto's tenacity and causing him to laugh uncontrollably. Sasuke could only turn his head away, and Sakura could still see that his body was shaking. She sighed again. Six years and Sasuke still had not acquired an efficient immunity against Naruto's colorful observations.

Kakashi rolled the scroll he had received from Godaime and burned it with a sequence of simple seals. Sakura noted a fleeting look of severity in her former teacher's expression, but decided that any inquiries should wait until a better time.

"Let's go."

—

They had been traveling uphill for quite some time. The trail was long and mountainous, but not dangerous. Naruto had stopped talking and everyone in the caravan had grown quiet. Sleeping or dozing, one of the two. The sun had begun to set; the pink hues in the sky would soon be set in a flame of orange before plunging into darkness.

Amphibian-man had been stingy and lecherous, offering a ride to Sakura but rejecting Naruto outright when the exceptionally active boy immediately declared that he was to sit next to her. Sakura, of course, declined to the... man's offer. Not only would it disrupt teamwork if she accepted such favoritism from the client, but… Sakura shook her head. Teamwork wouldn't suffer. Only she would.

"Ow!" Sakura thrust her hand out in an instinctive reaction as dirt and gravel gave away underfoot in effort to catch herself. A vice-like grip clamped around her wrist, sparing her from a rocky fall down the mountain path. Pain, however, mocked her and her rescuer's efforts as it coursed rapidly from her shin to her knee.

"Sakura." On the sound of her name, Sakura looked up. Her teacher observed her slightly contorted face for a moment and seemed to make a resolution on an issue he had been pondering on. Pulling her back up onto her feet, he lazily watched her regain her balance.

"It's tiring, isn't it? This walk…" Damn you, Inner Sakura cursed. Sakura herself, however, shrugged. She had just tripped. If it was nothing earth shattering or death defying, she could go on.

Something tickled her injured leg and crawled down where it was absorbed into the fabric of her sandal. Looking down, she saw dark streaks dribbling down from the source of her pain. Even in the waning light, Sakura recognized that her right leg was wounded fairly seriously. To stop and heal herself was out of question at the pace they were traveling.

"I'll carry you."

"Eh!" This was the first time Kakashi had offered to do anything generous to any of his ex-students. He never even bought them ramen and… wasn't he a pervert?

"We'll take care of the wound when we arrive. And besides," he smiled. At least, from what she could gather from his one visible eye. "We're falling behind."

"Wha… huh?" Sakura stared at the back of their caravan as the last cab passed calmly by.

"O-OK…" She agreed, quickly overshadowed the pervert thought out of her mind with the reassurance that he most likely wouldn't do anything funny on a mission. With the exception of this offer. Her mind somewhat at ease, she hesitantly agreed to a piggyback ride.

Her arms were pressed onto her sides and her fingers fidgeted on her sensei's shoulders. Attempting to kick the disturbing thought of her current state of intimacy into a corner of her mind, Sakura thought how six years ago she would have been ecstatic if Sasuke made an offer such as this. She deduced that her reaction would be the same, but not without a tinge of suspicion. But the person carrying her wasn't Sasuke or Naruto. This was Kakashi-sensei, which made things a bit… peculiar, given his reputation. Then again, he happened to be the only person who could immediately calm her distraught feelings. Sakura thought, her previous qualms slipping away as she slowly made herself comfortable.

Sakura decided that this was a good time to ask the jounin about the scroll.

After she finished organizing her thoughts, Sakura placed her chin on the collar of the copy ninja's vest and mumbled, "Kakashi-sensei…" Even though she hadn't been his student for quite some time, Sakura, as well as Naruto, was still in the habit of calling their teacher by his previous title.

"Is it about the mission?" he inquired immediately. Sakura nodded, knowing that the man could still identify the motion without looking.

Usually a scroll was given to the participants of the mission as information to be relayed to a third party. Not only did their teacher read the scroll, but he had also taken the liberty to destroy it.

What was also strange was that she was the only chuunin on this mission amidst three exceptionally dangerous and capable shinobis. A medic-nin and three jounins. It seemed to be overkill for a relatively simple escort duty… Was there something she missed?

"Is this… an A Rank mission?" she whispered. The only chuunin level shinobi allowed on Rank A missions were medic-nins. Sakura knew that her abilities as a medic were superior in general, which gave her an impression of defensive overkill.

"_Arghh!_" Naruto pointed an accusing finger at his 'pervert-sensei', finally noticing that Sakura was being carried, much to her annoyance. Kakashi didn't even have time to respond to her inquiry.

"Ah?"

"I wanna carry Sakura-chan!"

"Ah," he replied, but made no motions to set the girl down. Their teacher was good at irritating people. Sasuke watched in annoyance Naruto's bickering on how their ex-teacher didn't deserve Sakura before deciding to punch him in the head.

"Shut up." Though the kitsune dove into a heated argument, he understood the message in the Uchiha's red pupils: they had guests.

—

**Author's Notes:**  
Hmm… Usually I write with actual paper and pencil first... But I haven't really written stories straight onto the computer. Well… it's something new.

Ah yes: Hopefully I'll be able to update on a weekly basis.

"Fanartist"


	2. Nightlife At The Inn

**Chapter II: Nightlife at the Inn  
**

A few drops signaled the beginning of rainfall, quickly transforming the dusty trail to mud.

"…" Sasuke casually fingered a shuriken while Naruto gripped a kunai, all while latter railed on Sasuke's superiority complex; an argument that had already been finished a couple years back. The two boys dropped behind Kakashi in preparation of an attack.

Kakashi didn't bother to release Sakura. Instead he waved his hand, motioning for the two to put away their weapons.

"Eh, no need to be on guard." Sasuke glanced at Kakashi while Naruto looked gave the man an odd look but kept his mouth shut. Six years and a leadership position had taken toll on the Number One Surprising Ninja.

"From this point on don't refer to me with my first name," Kakashi continued, "Call me 'senpai'." Sasuke raised an eyebrow and Naruto blanched. The first words that came into Sakura's mind were 'Mid-Life Crisis'.

"You guys are now classified as Leaf Chuunins. Never reveal your surname to anyone. Especially you, Sasuke." Sasuke and Sakura grasped the situation and Naruto nodded in a manner his team immediately recognized as 'I don't understand, so I'll ask Sakura-chan later'.

This was a covert operation. The fact that their status had been changed as well as their identity was proof of political tension between the Cloud and the Leaf. Perhaps the Cloud was still disappointed in its failure to obtain the Byakugan? Then why did Tsunade-sama send two Sharingan users; an ability that was also notoriously coveted?

"Hey look!" Naruto interrupted Sakura's thoughts as a village slowly emerged from the fog.

The rainfall had slowed the group's pace and demanded a delay in their travel schedule. Thinking could wait until later. Food was the team's main concern right now.

Sasuke glanced around the forest. The stalkers had vanished.

—

After spending several hours in the rain, Sakura felt her cold skin buzz and dissolve into the hot water. She closed her eyes and sat with her head tilted back far enough to touch the stone edge of the bath. Keeping her injured shin just above the surface of the water she basking in the heat and steam that whispered around her face. I could stay here forever, Sakura thought, listening to the uninterrupted gurgles from the continuously running spring that provided hot water.

Being the only female in the team had its perks; Sakura had a whole room to herself while the remaining three slept in the next room, as well as a bath. Unfortunately, the male and female sides of the bath were only separated by a thin, wooden fold-out wall. Sakura had worried about some clumsy oaf 'accidentally' knocking over the makeshift divider (namely Naruto), so she seized the chance to bring some kunais and smoke bombs.

"Ano-sa, ano-sa," Sakura heard Naruto's voice echo from the other side of the bathhouse, "Isn't it weird that Ka— Um, senpai doesn't take a bath?"

"What about it?" The second voice was undoubtedly Sasuke's. Sakura had a good idea where this conversation was headed.

"... If _senpai_ needed to wash... He would have to take off his mask, wouldn't he?" Sakura slowly opened her eyes and sighed.

"Naruto, we've been trying to look under senpai's mask for six years. We've bought him twelve bowls of ramen, tried to remove it while he was asleep about ten times, blatantly attacked him three times, which adds up to twenty-five attempts," Sakura paused to lift her head. "And none of them were successful."

"But we're um, chuunins now! We can definitely succeed! Right, Sasuke?"

"..." The other boy's lack of response told Sakura that he was interested in Naruto's devious plan but failed in breaking out of character to acknowledge it.

Sakura rose and snatched a towel from a wooden basket she had set beside the pool. Even if _both_ Naruto and Sasuke became Hokage, she doubted that their streak of defeats in their zealous quest to see Kakashi's face would give way to success. The deities that provided the blessings to the Uchiha and Uzumaki were already hard-pressed when scraping up enough chances for the two to be alive at all. No way they were going to exhaust their efforts on something like this.

Ridiculous, she thought, securing the towel around her. Nothing could possibly convince that man to show them his face. Proclamation set in steel, Sakura made her way to the showers.

—

"…"

"…"

"… So… Who wants the bed?"

—

Sasuke tossed and turned on the floor. It was not necessarily the floor that was uncomfortable; it was that fact that Naruto had beaten him in an argument. Next time he would have to research a little 'Dead last' and 'idiot' can only last for so long.

There was also the feeling of something messing that he couldn't shake since their 'little walk' to the city. Eight people trailing them, yet not attacking.

"Can't sleep?" A voice broke through Naruto's snores and Sasuke's thoughts.

"Ah…" Sasuke answered dully. He changed his position for the umpteenth time. "Kakashi. What are we really doing?" While monetary transactions had taken place in the lobby, Sakura confided her theories about the mission scroll to Sasuke and Naruto in the lobby. An extra one and another half minds wouldn't hurt in speculating.

"Mmm… Well, it's nothing pleasant." If Kakashi had another title other than 'Copy Ninja', it would have been 'Man of Many Understatements'. This mission would be quite eventful.

Sasuke's eyes swirled red a split second before something smashed through the window. He yanked Naruto out of slumber and off the bed, immediately somersaulting to the middle of the room as his back slammed into Kakashi's. Four figures immediately surrounded the two.

It was all Kakashi needed to size up the opposition. Chuunin level. Sasuke and Naruto could handle them easily and Sakura…

_Sakura_

There was a gurgle as two ninja fell with kunai lodged in their throats. Naruto's body was awkwardly positioned upside-down where he had fallen, legs suspended in the air and previously sleepy and blissful demeanor disintegrating like a watered soufflé. Recovering from his initial shock and flipping his body right-side up, he proceeded to grumble about 'damn rookie ninjas and their stupid flashy entrances'.

"Sasuke! Naruto! I'm going to check up on Sakura."

"Roger!"

—

The team was twelve again as Sakura watched Naruto and Sasuke bicker on what seemed to be the one who could summon the strangest creature they could imagine. So far, Sasuke was winning with his creation: Gai-sensei's head on Tsunade-sama's body. It was one of the very few times Sakura began seriously questioning Sasuke's sanity rather than Naruto's or her sensei's.

"I can do better so you'd better not get overconfident!" Naruto bit his thumb and began performing seals.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" To Sakura's horror, a giant frog-man (that looked quite familiar) was summoned beneath Naruto and began chanting like a monk while it commenced to destroy Konoha.

"Sakura! Oi, Sakura!" She noticed Sasuke calling out her name and shaking her by the shoulders, not paying the slightest attention to the rather disturbing performance provided by Naruto.

"Sakura!" Sakura gave a start as her eyes snapped open and peered at the face before her.

"Kakashi-sensei?" She reached under her pillow and grabbed a kunai while quickly noting two corpses obscured by shadows next to the veranda door.

Before she could react, Kakashi grabbed Sakura, dragging her to the floor as shrapnel exploded from the veranda and tore though the bed. For a few long seconds, the room was flooded by what looked like thousands upon thousands of metal shards which Sakura beheld with wide eyes as Kakashi flattened her to the ground and covered her head with his arms.

The shrieks of metal stopped abruptly and gave way to the soft pattering of the rain. The sounds of warfare had also ceased from where Naruto and Sasuke were located.

_I can protect myself._

The defiant thought popped into Sakura's mind, bringing her back from her daze and changing her disposition from shocked to angry. That attack was for _her_. If anyone was to be damaged, it would have been for _her_. She had no need for a bodyguard. What was Tsunade-sama _thinking_ while she assigned teammates?

Using an unnecessary amount of force, she pushed away the arms that covered her head with one hand and her ex-teacher with the other. She did not want to be protected like this, and of all people, she expected Kakashi to understand more than her two other cohorts. Kakashi, however, only paused and raised an eyebrow at Sakura's accusing glare before getting up.

She's changed a bit, he observed calmly.

Sakura could now clearly see that Kakashi had several blades protruding from his shoulder and one that was lodged dangerously close to his spine. There was no poison, and the injuries were, for the most part, rather basic. Had he worn his vest, the carpet would have been spared, she thought. Poor carpet.

Rising indignantly from the floor, Sakura reached for her medicine pack from where she feel and saw that the mattress had transformed into something that resembled a tub of shuriken. In fact, her whole room glittered from assorted blades and metals lodged into the floor, furniture, walls and everything in between.

Kakashi looked about and said, "I suppose you're not too keen on sleeping here tonight."

"I can take care of myself," Sakura snapped. Her voice betrayed all the signs of an irate teenager, but her hands were gentle as she cut through his shirt to remove the shrapnel.

"Hai, hai."

Sakura stopped for a moment. After sizing up the situation, sleeping alone with rain spraying into the room and two dead ninjas staring at her with glazed eyes for the whole night was an experience she would like to avoid.

"I get the bed."

—

**Author's Notes:**  
Many thanks to those who reviewed and left criticism w Especially Maya (no, you're not a flamer ) and Silent Angel (who just revealed to me that part of the first chapter I added didn't show up... O.o).

I try to keep the character in character as much as I can, so I'm happy.

It seems like I need a beta...

(**EDIT** April 23, 2013: Tidied up)

"Fanartist"


	3. Royalty

**Chapter III: Royalty  
**

The next morning, the team loitered about their client's hotel in the early morning drizzle. Sakura did her best not to affect the men with her sour mood. After all, they did vacate the bed as a penance to her ruined room and equipment though the men had also sustained a bit of damage themselves.

Naruto was also none too chipper. Not only did he miss out on a full night's sleep, he had not seen or consumed ramen in over twenty-four hours. A single glance and one would be convinced that there are indeed serious effects of withdrawal concerning ramen.

Sasuke had withdrawn himself into his mind and refused to speak to anyone in the morning. Kakashi was the only one that seemed unaffected by the group's melancholy or the weather, which was ironic due to the fact that he was the only person who sustained any physical damage.

What also attributed to the team's dark mood was that the damages resulting from last night were not taken without a scene from the manager. Apparently someone had sabotaged the fuse box the night, and being fully capable ninjas, the blame and bill was received by Team Seven. Sakura calculated and deduced that either Hokage-sama would take care of their expenses or the team would have to lobby for an extremely generous pay raise.

Their client, on the other hand, never looked…better. In a very loose expression.

"Ah, I've forgotten that this is the time when the monsoon sets in for the summer," the man guttered.

A monsoon. Sakura thought. A _monsoon_. Why couldn't they just have a damned _hurricane_ to blow the whole caravan to kingdom come!

Violent images of the Cloud's Feudal Lord blown into the air and impaling himself on landing made Sakura's eyes glimmer with a lunatic's twinkle and her mouth twist into a rather Cheshire smile. Sasuke and Naruto slowly shuffled away from the euphoric woman and decided that leaving a generous buffering distance, just in case Sakura blew her top was necessary today.

—

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto bounced up to the kunoichi having already forgotten the dangers of the volatile nature of feminine emotions.

"Do you want me to carry you?" The statement made Sakura start. What was with these guys? Her leg was healing well though she would have a large scar in place of a welt. Pity that she would be denied bragging rights on such a heroic-looking scar. Purging the thought of potential bodyguards, she decided to pine for another reason for Naruto's offer. After all, he _did_ have Hinata.

"No, after all, I _am_ a medic-nin."

"Hmm... Does it work that way?" While contemplated this bit of information, Sakura.

"Is it about _senpai_ carrying me yesterday?" she asked. To her relief, Naruto straightened up and said "Of course! He may have moved on to Icha Icha Violence (whatever that's about), but that doesn't mean he's not a pervert anymore!"

Sakura giggled and Naruto's pout broke into his toothy trademark grin. Sasuke found that breathing came more naturally after watching Sakura's expression loosen. What was it Shikamaru said? Something about women being masters with a whip… Or whipping masters… In either case, it seemed like all three men were to be subjected to Sakura's emotions for the rest of the mission.

"If you really want to know, I'd remind you that you three _are_ old enough to read the series." Naruto and Sakura froze then turned to face Kakashi, laughing sheepishly. Naruto took that as a cue to retreat to the opposite side of the trail and Sakura fell silent, too remorseful to move, but too embarrassed to speak. For the next two hours, neither of them said a word. On the other side of the caravan, Sasuke faced the full brunt of Naruto's chatter alone for the second day in a row.

The distance that was to be covered today was less than that of the previous, but boredom had occupied a good amount of time without any persuers.

"Sakura, you're limping." Dammit. Sakura gritted her teeth. Her healing technique still needed tweaking. Though the surface looked fine, the flesh underneath the skin was still bruised. She only had a slight limp, but that was enough to catch Kakashi's attention.

"I _know_," she huffed impatiently. Today I'm not going to be carried like some spoiled princess. She engraved the mantra deeply into her mind to shoo away the the event of last night.

"That's nice, but aggravating your wound won't help your performance." Sakura started violently, wondering if Kakashi had read her mind or if he was just replying to her statement. The episode left her speechless for a moment, letting the jounin continue to speak.

"You can always hitch a ride on the back of the carriage. I highly doubt the bulls would mind."

"I'm fine." She really was, but the man did not look convinced.

"Or you could have Naruto or Sasuke carry you…"

"I'm _fine_," she repeated impatiently. "Besides, they have girlfriends. I'd be intruding."

"Oh? Hm… Looks like a lot has happened while I was gone…" Sakura smiled, a bit relieved that now they were straying from the topic of her health. She plunged eagerly into a purpsefully long explanation of what had happened since the three had deviated into their own separate paths.

The only thing that happened was that they had grown up. Naruto had Hinata and Sasuke… Well, he had someone, but no one really knew who. For all she knew, he could have created a rumor to ward away his slowly disbanding group of fan girls. There were always a few annoying stragglers, he said.

"What about you?" The question triggered a muddle of feelings to surface. Though admitting it was painful, Sakura knew that somewhere inside her, she yearned for a romantic relationship. The pang of disdain she always experienced when walking by couples on the street was a sure sign a concealed jealousy.

"Not yet," she replied semi-jokingly. "What about you, um, senpai?"

"Hm? Well, life's like that." What the hell—what kind of answer was that? The answer was a bit too reminiscent of his first introduction. At least that meant nothing's changed, Sakura thought.

"Now back to your leg…"

"I'm fine. Really." Giving a smile that she knew Kakashi would ignore, Sakura straightened up and was about to walk away when she felt her body fly up into the air. After a moment of confusion, she numbly realizing that her body was not connected to the earth.

Kakashi caught up to the carriage and placed Sakura gently on the back. The latter was still a bit stunned at the little time that elapsed from when she was walking to now where she was sitting.

"You will stay there for the remainder of the trip."

"But—"

"I will not have a medic on this team that cannot take proper care of themselves." The argument was short and the victor was clear. Sakura watched Kakashi return to his earlier position about the carriage and felt a hot and bitter lump rise in her throat.

She hated him right now… She hated him because even though all she had was a bruise, Kakashi would not allow her to walk just because he did not know the severity of her state. He cares too much, Sakura thought bitterly. In a corner of her mind, Sakura noted how Kakashi made her experience a spectrum of emotions she would rather not feel.

She averted her attention to Naruto and Sasuke. To see the two together was such a common sight in Konoha. After the whole Orochimaru ordeal, Naruto had returned, dragging Sasuke back from what seemed to be Hell. Since then, the two had been inseparable. What had happened during the mission was never discussed outside of Sasuke's personalized rescue squad and Sakura felt alienated as she watched the two thrive in their tightly knitted friendship.

Until the three passed the next chunnin exam, Kakashi had turned to training Sakura's abilities. Understanding that she did not want to be left behind, Kakashi respected that fact by training her to the point where she could enter and pass the chunnin exam without having to doubt her abilities. Kakashi's circumstances during the previous exam that led to neglect on Sakura's part was understandable: She had failed passing the preliminary round, Sasuke was to fight a homicidal maniac and Naruto's only problem seemed to be chakra control.

I guess he wanted to make it up to me, Sakura concluded. But was Kakashi even capable of remorse at all? The insane amount of time he made everyone wait for his arrival led her to believe otherwise. A normal person would at least feel the slightest bit guilty.

The raindrops were growing fatter and fatter. Sakura removed her sandals and dangled her legs over the muddy trail, watching rivulets of water stream down her toes. Scowling at her unblemished skin, she felt disgusted at her lack of battle scars.

She hated being a princess.

—

**Author's Notes:**  
[EDIT April 2013: Changed a few details for consistency, cleaned up here and there]

Though I didn't like this one because it was horribly uneventful, I thought it was necessary to show what had happened thus far as well as Sakura's current state in character. Also to explain the inconsistency in Chapter 1.

I'm an abomination of the Action/Adventure catagory...

kUnOichi-sAkUrA: No, I don't think I'll add lemon...

Silent Angel: Attempted to fix all the problems you pointed out ;

Maya Amano: Kakashi is tall for his own age, so I kept him taller than everyone. And the client just looks like a frog, he's not an actual frog.

"Fanartist"


	4. The Handkerchief

**Chapter IV: The Handkerchief  
**

Nothing extraordinary happened after the convoy reached its destination except that Sasuke almost choked on a fishbone during dinner. Offering to buy Kakashi a meal had proved unsuccessful in exposing his face again, much to Naruto and Sasuke's chagrin.

Sakura refused to speak to Kakashi the whole night. He should have know that she was fit to travel and her ire towards the all-knowing Kakashi-sensei was justified for he had failed to notice that Sakura's protests were unfeigned. This did not count the fact that her medical knowledge surpassed Kakashi's by a generous margin. Still, it was his fault.

The feudal lord had strongly Sakura to a formal party the day after their arrival, which she had attempted to decline as humbly as she could with a straight face. After a skirmish of profuse apologies and goading on the verge of orders, Sakura was pushed to accept the invitation after the man coaxed her with an extended invitation to Naruto, Kakashi, and with a slight hesitation, Sasuke.

Biting her lip and fidgeting with her teacup, Sakura waited for the right time to announce the team's sudden invitation. Naruto would be estatic for the free food, so that made one happy camper. Kakashi, she could care less about right now. Sasuke, however…

"Sakura? What's wrong? You've been really quiet today." Sasuke noted Sakura's lack of verve and had waited until there was a lull in the men's conversation to ask what ailed her.

"Eh… Well… I-I have some… news…" Sakura shrunk into her seat, realizing belatedly that it was a bad idea to agree to the rest of the team's invitation without their permission.

"We're going to a party tomorrow."

"Yay!" As expected, Naruto threw his hands up in the air in child-like joy by the word 'party'. And as expected, Sasuke and Kakashi was less enthused.

"When is it?"

"Sakura, why didn't you consult us?"

"Tomorrow night," Sakura answered Sasuke, ignoring Kakashi.

"He said that he would give us things to wear," she continued with a little more hesitation.

Sasuke shrugged. "You gave him your word. We can't let you tarnish our reputation as a team."

Sakura laughed weakly and jumped as Naruto slammed a generous amount of legal tender on the table, earning everyone's attention. "1,500 ryou says that he's gonna make Sasuke dress up in a chicken suit." While no one accepted his offer, Naruto was rewarded with a Vengeful Uchiha Punch on the back of his head and made his brow collide violently into the table.

"So, will this interfere with the real mission?" Sasuke, blithely observing the fruit of his previous feat before downing his tea. All eyes turned to the leader. Naruto also lifted his head to look at Kakashi while revealing a bruising forehead.

Kakashi paused to quickly mull over the facts once more.

"Nope."

—

They convened at midnight with Kakashi's promise of revealing the 'real mission'. Naruto's excitement of engaging in an important mission, however, was doused by the time Kakashi arrived. He was not hours late as usual, but late enough to cause discontentment on his teammate's behalf.

"I was having this dream of meeting you guys here and didn't realize it wasn't real until Naruto ate me."

"_Liar_" growled said ninja. Sakura smothered a giggle. Sasuke tried to picture Naruto eating Kakashi and stopped immediately as images of Naruto dining on an arm came to his mind a bit too clearly.

"So. Our mission?" The quicker the meeting ended the better.

"Ah yes… Well, it's espionage." Naruto's face fell. Espionage meant sneaking around and being stealthy. Espionage meant no Rasengan. Therefore, espionage meant boredom.

"The Cloud has been a bit secretive lately and Tsunade-sama wants us to figure out what's going on. There have been rumors that the Cloud is preparing for war, but we still need more information to know what we're dealing with." Another war. Naruto glanced at Sakura, whose eyes now mirrored the weariness back when she had first witnessed the aftermath of Orochimaru's invasion. It was barely five years since the last war against that psychopath and his minions. Even before a new generation of ninjas had been raised, there was already a possibility that the weakened Hidden Leaf Village would have to expend their dwindling forces again.

"Why were we not told of this during the briefing?" Sasuke was a bit irritated that Kakashi was the only one who knew what was going on.

"… Spies? In Konoha?" Sakura came to the conclusion first.

"Yup."

"But why? We don't have anything to hide. Couldn't we just throw them out?" Naruto was exasperated as soon as he learned that his Tsunade-baachan was allowing such activities take place. Since Tsunade was instilled as the new Hokage, Naruto, despite his knack of tacking 'baa-chan' in place of her title, had feelings toward the Godaime that were much like a little brother with a massive Sister Complex.

"It's a political maneuver," Sasuke explained, quickly catching onto Sakura's drift "if we had caught the spies, we would be asking for war. In the state our village is in right now, we have no way to support one.

"Unfortunately, that's why we can't afford to be caught. Whatever this jutsu or weapon is, I don't think it would be a good idea for Konoha to become a testing ground for it." The group fell silent for a moment.

"So where do we start?" Sakura asked.

"Tomorrow. At the party. Establish connections and collect information. We'll be on the run for most of the mission, so be sure to enjoy the next few days." The meeting was adjourned. Sakura swiftly returned to her room and replaced the shadow clone lying in her bed, now aware of the full burden on her and her party.

And she smiled in anticipation.

—

The team was busy that morning on receiving a list of guests, completing a thorough research on every member that was formally invited over a hearty bowl of ramen. Reviewing a full afternoon's worth of studious sweat continued well into the evening.

Everyone was piled into Kakashi's room when the coat rack arrived of formalities were delivered. Naruto tore through the dust jacket of an article addressed to Sasuke and expressed clear dissatisfaction when discovering that Sasuke's attire for that evening did not resemble poultry in the slightest bit.

The men were to wear classic formalities; black and white tuxedos. Each seized their assigned package and decided to designate a plot in the room where they could change. This was more efficient time-wise, which was more than they could say for their leader. Rather than changing, he seemed to have set himself to scrutinizing every stitch on his clothing.

"Alright," Sakura said, handing a piece of paper riddled with various arrows, characters and symbols to Naruto as she closed the door to the bathroom.

"Let's review the list of the Big Kahunas" Sakura's voice was heard quite clearly on the other side of the bathroom door "We have the owner of the second largest trading company in the Lightning Country…"

"Whom our client has a habit of helping in extremely generous ways," Kakashi added

"…Another feudal lord who happens to be our client's brother-in-law…"

"Women's rights advocates should look into this marriage," Sasuke quipped dully as he removed the cufflinks he had been holding in between his teeth.

"…And also the secretary of the current Raikage. Very important, top priority" Naruto did a double take at the rest Sakura's notes and found that the remaining names were crossed off accompanied with motives in red, miniscule kanji.

"…That's it?" he fastened his cuffs and stared at the bow tie. Now what was this?

"Yeah, but there've been rumors that he's a chronic womanizer and can't control his acts of perversion too well…" Sakura's voice trailed off. An image of Jiraiya immediately came to Naruto's mind. Perverts. They were everywhere.

A long silence had abruptly weighed down the room that had been so lively a few seconds ago.

"Sakura?" The prolonged silence had convinced Sasuke to knock on the door to assure Sakura that her team was still waiting for her. Naruto rattled the knob to find it locked. He looked at Sasuke, both exasperated and at the same time unsure of the next course of action. That was when Kakashi decided to step in.

"Sakura, I'll count to three before I come in or you say something." There was still no reply.

"One…two…three." Kakashi gripped the doorknob.

"I'm not going."

There was a general feeling of shock and the three men looked at each of their faces, confused at Sakura's declaration.

Not going? They needed Sakura to be at the party. Her presence was possibly the easiest and only way for them to establish good relations with their targets. _Especially_ since they were all male.

"Ah ha ha ha! Sakura-chan, it's about the pervert, right? Don't worry; we'll protect you from him!" Naruto attempted to pinpoint and alleviate the kunoichi's apprehensions.

"It's not that. I'm not going."

"Then what's wrong? We're running out of time," Sasuke warned impatiently. Whatever happened in the lavatory, the event had rendered Sakura to be quite distraught. We don't have time for pre-party jitters, dammit.

Kakashi stared at the ceiling for a moment and thought upon this sudden turn of events.

"Should we talk about it?" Another silence. Kakashi released the doorknob as Sakura ultimately cracked open the door, allowing enough room for the men to see two bright green pupils. Looking at the trio's questioning countenances, Sakura considered Kakashi's proposal.

"Naruto…Sasuke-kun…I'm sorry, but can you guys go outside? Just for awhile," She pleaded. Sakura felt that she needed someone who had nerves of steel at this time. Someone who had the emotional stability to keep calm in every kind of situation. Especially when on issues involving women. And that was where Naruto and Sasuke fell short.

"We'll wait for you at the party." Someone had to be on time.

The door closed and two were alone. Kakashi crossed his arms and asked, "So what's the problem?"

"It's…um…" Sakura picked at the doorknob for a few minutes. She was stalling and Kakashi knew that. Yet he was more than willing to wait, mostly out of curiosity.

Sakura sighed in resignation and swung the door open.

—

Naruto pressed his ear to the door, hoping to make out anything coherent that would give information on Sakura's current plight. Beside him, Sasuke pulled on his cloak and handed Naruto an extra.

"You idiot, not even a ninja can hear through those doors." Sasuke was exasperated the blond's lack of knowledge and courtesy. Naruto only pressed his ear harder against the door and replied, "Sakura's out of the bathroom."

"If Sakura wanted us outside, she obviously doesn't trust us to help her with her problem. So stop eavesdropping and let's go."

"…I think Kakashi-sensei just asked her what's wrong."

"…" Sasuke stared at the hotel carpet in contemplation.

"I installed a bug in the ceiling."

—

The scarlet dress Sakura had received exposed her shoulders and a liberal amount of cleavage. Her legs fared a bit better. Though the skirt barely stretched mid-thigh, a long, translucent square of lace succeeded in veiling her lower limbs. To a certain extent.

Several minutes passed. The feeling of uneasiness grew stronger as the clock had become unbearably raucous.

"What's wrong?" he asked. The poor man's knowledge on women and their clothing was limited to their worries of looking fat. Sakura did not look and was not fat in all possible definitions, which served as leverage to further his confusion.

"I can't go out wearing this!" Sakura exploded, instantly crossing her arms to cover her bosom.

"You'd think that with all his money, the toad would be able to afford a full dress! Have you even seen the back! It's not even there! _This_," she spat vehemently, pointing to the offending article on her skin, "Is a glorified handkerchief!"

Finished with her brief outburst, Sakura sighed once more and turned her back to Kakashi. True to her word, there was nothing that censored her bare back from her neck to her waist.

Kakashi cleared his throat and waited awhile before speaking.

"Sakura, all four of us have to be present at this party. There's a good possibility that we will be able to finish this mission quicker if we establish connections."

"No."

"Sakura, we're a team, remember?" His eye was insinuating that irritating smile. She was losing this argument again

Sakura's shoulders slumped and she whined, "But couldn't I just stay behind? Aren't you?"

"Nope. I'll be there as soon as I do some last minute preparations."

She stared at the floor for a moment. "Is there anything else I can wear?" she asked dejectedly. Sitting was going to be problematic.

"Some jewelry, a pair of gloves and a fan," he replied, handing to Sakura a box. Now would not be a good time to remind the implications of her lascivious dress nor the extravagant accessories. As lewd as their client had been, he had good tastes in women apparel. Maybe that was what made him perverted.

Kakashi watched Sakura slip on the gloves as she made her way past him to the exit. She touched the knob in slight hesitation before gripping it tightly to turn it.

"Sakura." She stopped. Both had their backs turned toward each other's, yet neither of them turned around.

"You look beautiful."

A heat crept up her neck and spread wildly into her cheeks and across her face. Her heart seemed to have bloated which explained the increased pressure on her lungs, causing difficulty in breathing. Sakura fumbled for words and spit out the first ones that came to mind.

"Shut up, sensei."

He laughed in reply.

—

**Author's Notes:**  
Whee! It's another long (talky) chapter with an OOC Kakashi!

...Or is he? I dunno, he's such a strange/mysterious person, and Mr. Kishimoto doesn't really go in depth with him (Like Sakura).

I finally decided that I need a beta! But not now...

Do I make weird titles? I know that my summery is a bit misleading when it comes to tone... Oh well. I'll just change it.

**Demeter1:** You were the one who convinced me to get a beta! Yay for influence!

**yukari youkai** My knowledge of Gundam Wing is limited to my previously GW obsessed friends who didn't like Relena (Just saying I don't know much about her .;)

"Fanartist"


	5. Of Bellboys and Parties

**Chapter V: Of Bellboys and Parties  
**

Though the rain had significantly increased, there was no dampening of the lively mood of the party.

Naruto nearly tripped down the stairs while staring at a gargantuan chandelier that twinkled over the center of a lustrous marble floor. The gaudy furniture embellished with gold and statues made from an assortment of igneous rocks accentuated the glitter of the mansion's interior. Sasuke scoffed at Naruto's inattention. That idiot was always fascinated in anything bright and shiny.

Hanging his cloak over the arm of a chair, Sasuke fingered his loose hat awkwardly before organizing a visual hunt for important figures, which included an analysis of the mansion. Only the rich could afford to throw or be invited to these kinds of parties. Formal Western clothing had a fickle habit of being hard to find and quite expensive when found. The amount of money invested in the costume, allied with the rain, however, could not convince the Uchiha into wearing the ridiculously cylindrical hat.

A group of musicians played unfamiliar tunes on what looked like extravagant boxes of various sizes at the side of the dance floor while attendants snaked through the guests serving appetizers. Four rooms were to be used during the course of the party including the dining hall. The balconies were also open to the public.

Sasuke nonchalantly snatched the champagne Naruto had acquired from a passing waiter and emptied its contents in a nearby potted plant.

"No drinking."

Turning away from his pouting friend, Sasuke figured that Sakura should arrive soon and scanned the area for his teammate. Making her arrive alone was a good idea. Sakura was quite attractive, and a single woman would hopefully catch the attention of their target

Sasuke's eyes halted their wild scanning and did a double take of the stairwell from the entrance.

Previously, he had believed that Sakura's handkerchief quote was nothing more than an extreme exaggeration of the truth, noting that her wardrobe had progressively become more conservative. At least, that was his take. Naruto was shoving tissues up his nose.

Her claim was closer to the truth Sasuke realized. Garnets at Sakura's throat, ears and arms glittered in the soft light as she descended the stairs. Though she took care to remove the bounce from her step, the bangs she had parted to one side gently brushed her cheek as she walked. On her head, locks of pink hair piled up in fashionable disarray, held in place by four long, black, and ominously sharp pins. Senbon needles dressed to kill.

Halfway down her decent, Sakura caught Sasuke's gaze and did her best to smile as normally as possible. Rather than returning the gesture, Sasuke covered his face with a gloved hand and quickly turned away. He prayed to the four deceased Hokage that once he was accepted into the ANBU, fate would grant his team an assassination mission of a certain feudal lord in the Lighting Country.

Naruto, on the other hand, had gone catatonic before spazzing out. His reaction involved more theatrics and decibels compared to his friend and hastened Sakura's entrance in order to land a decisive blow on the blonde's head before he attracted any more attention.

The kunoichi threatened her two escorts; if the two leaked any information into Konoha concerning her apparel this evening they would be signing their death warrants the next time they checked into the hospital. Both raised their right hand in solemn oath. Both crossed the fingers of their left hand outside of Sakura's hawk-like gaze.

"So what about ero-senpai?" Naruto held up his bowtie and invited Sakura to knot it for him.

"He said that he's coming later."

"'Later', he says," Sasuke quoted cynically while eyeing his top hap with heretical interest. They would be lucky if he arrived 'in time' to see them leaving.

"Will he have his mask off?" Naruto asked hopefully. Pulling the ends taut, Sakura adjusted the tie some more before stepping back to observe her handiwork. She shrugged.

"I would look weird if he had it on...but I don't think s...senpai has enough fashion sense to take it off," she admitted. As Naruto sulked, Sakura's eyes caught Sasuke fidgeting with his hat.

"You're supposed to leave that with the bellboy." The two elite ninjas looked blankly at each other.

"Bellboy?" they questioned in unison. Come to think of it, there was a guy that tried to take their belongings at the door. Sasuke had tied him to a tree when he insisted quite tenaciously to relieve Naruto of his cloak. Such blatant methods of larceny were ingenious, yet creativity in public offense was no excuse for acquitting petty crimes.

"Is that a guy that takes people's stuff at the door?" Sasuke prompted. God help us if it is, he thought.

"Yes."

Oh. Crap.

"Eh he he he..." Naruto laughed nervously and quickly pulled Sasuke aside.

"Did you tie him up in the garden or the front lawn?"

Sakura groaned. Tonight was going to be a long night.

————————————————

Other than the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of a distraught bellboy, the party ran rather smoothly.

It happened to be that six years had served to mature the trio into three alluring cases. In addition, their lack of exposure to high society created a bubble of mystery. The Rumor Mill had failed to touch them, and many were quite keen on gleaning information on the unknown guests before drawing near. Thus, no one had approached them. Yet.

"How are we supposed to 'establish connections' if we just stand here?" Naruto's exasperated remark sounded odd with the joyful expression that was plastered on his face.

"Just a few more minutes before the natives come out to investigate," Sasuke said as he beckoned to a waiter with a platter of refreshments. Naruto huffed in impatience and declared that he would scout for other targets alone. Better doing something rather than nothing.

Soon after his departure, however, Sasuke became aware of a person of importance making their way to where he and Sakura stood. Handing a glass of a non-alcoholic sort to Sakura, he muttered a warning.

"Women's rights case, two o'clock."

"Victim or perpetrator?"

"Neither." Inner Sakura expelled a long breath of relief. Hopefully the meeting with the Bullfrog would be delayed long enough until she found a bathroom.

"Ah, so you must be the ninjas that my brother-in-law hired for escort!" A rather pale man with a high, nasal voice that spoke with a heavy accent, 'graced' Sasuke and Sakura's with his company. From that afternoon's research, Sakura had found out that this man had come from a country no one from Team Seven had heard of. It was fairly clear that his status as a lord came from family ties as well as a generous amount of hard cash. Evidence of cross-cultural marriage reeked on convenience.

"You must be Thompson-sama," Sakura answered warmly. The sudden change of her character caught Sasuke off guard. She was good, he thought.

Thin lips curled into quite a sinister smile, deftly lifting Sakura's gloved hand and kissing it with practiced ease. The task was done with such dexterity that Sasuke felt his brain implode. This must be what they call Culture Shock. Briefly pondering this new advance in emotional range with his surviving brain cells, the discombobulated shinobi decided that some 'alone time' should remedy the psychological damage.

"I need to go restore my mind," Sasuke drawled mechanically. Sakura immediately turned to plead wordlessly for his company until she saw that his eyes had glazed over and his features sported an abnormal shade of grey. Watching him drift away, she decided to leave him be.

"It seem like your husband is not feeling well."

Husband? Sakura blushed furiously and wondered where such outlandish notions originated.

"H-he's not my husband," she stuttered. Suddenly she felt intimidated by this man that seemed frail enough to snap in a good breeze several seconds ago. In her anxiety, Sakura was now on high alert for anyone who came close enough to provide distraction.

"Oh?" The man was unnervingly fluent at Japanese. "Then that yellow-haired friend of yours..."

"Both are just teammates, Thompson-sama." Sakura prayed that Sasuke or Naruto would return before she let something awful slip from under her genteel façade.

"Sakura-san, please, you do not need to express such formalities," he implored amicably before rushing on, "So are you, at this moment, single?" First her mother, now this man. What was it with people and their interest in her marital status? Where the deities feeling a pressing need to give her the ball and chain treatment so early in life?

Sakura opened her mouth to administer rebuttal but froze at a hand that slipped possessively around her waist. A hand that belonged to someone that possessed stealth far above her own. A hand that was not Sasuke or Naruto's. Another ninja.

"I'm sorry," an unmistakably masculine voice behind the kunoichi spoke with smooth, lethal sincerity.

"Were you speaking with my wife?"

————————————————

**Author's Note:**  
I thought that this chapter was to be uploaded next week, but lo and behold, I managed to get it up this week (though a bit late).

As for the next chapter and future updates... I'm not too sure what'll happen. Check my user page if I don't update for an extended period of time.

I have a beta! Many thanks to Tea Leaf!

"Fanartist"


	6. The Rumor Mill

**Chapter VI: The Rumor Mill  
**

Thompson-sama looked quite scandalized by the show of hostility from the man behind his new lady-friend. Sakura tried not to appear as shocked as she felt.

Another ninja... and a jounin at that.

Sakura turned to face her 'husband' and exclaimed, "So there you are!" to a tall man who looked only vaguely familiar. Quickly apologizing to Thompson-sama, Sakura pushed her newfound partner towards an abandoned balcony. To her credit, the gentleman who declared himself as her husband was rather cute. But 'cute' does nothing when one's life was at the point of a ten-inch steel hairpin, which was precisely where this man stood once Sakura made sure she and her mystery spouse was alone.

Bodily pressing him to the wall, Sakura held the needle deftly to the man's throat. He, on the other hand, gave more attention to the kunoichi rather than his impending death. There was not a trace of panic emanating from him. A veteran ninja. Damn, this was bad.

"I save your life and this is how you thank me?" he teased. His demeanor screamed a name she could not grasp and Sakura found herself reduced to glaring at a pair of eyes nearly obscured by unnaturally pale hair.

"Who are you? What business do you have here?" To her surprise, the man was taken aback by her question. To her annoyance, he began to laugh. Moments later he gave a smile full of high amusement and no malice.

"Do I look that different without my mask, Sakura-kun?"

"...!" The needle clattered to the stone balcony. All nervous tension dispersed from Sakura's body and was replaced by a feeling of utter disdain at her own stupidity. In a hopeful shadow of doubt, she lifted her hand and brushed away the bangs over the man's left eye to reveal a scar running perpendicularly through his eyelid.

Sakura was paralyzed on discovering the magnitude of her idiocy. She was this close to murdering her own team leader of all people. And not just any leader; the teacher she had trained under for _four years_.

"Senpai..." Kakashi looked into Sakura's eyes and saw her green eyes clouding over. He readied himself for any brash decisions on Sakura's behalf since she was currently in a state of mind where throwing herself off the balcony in humiliation was perfectly normal. Even though she would fall harmlessly into the faux stream that flowed by the first story verandas.

"Since when are we married?" Oh, so she wasn't going for a two foot plunge.

"There was speculation that you weren't single, which transformed to having a boyfriend, then to possible engagement which would mean you were to be married, and resulted in the end of your honeymoon, explaining why you were now active in missions," he explained. Absolutely nothing he said registered any form of logic in Sakura who had lived apart from female drama all her life. The systematic absurdity of the grapevine had always been and was to be forever lost to her.

"And because you so poignantly declared that Sasuke and Naruto were 'just friends'," he continued, ignoring her baffled look, "there had to be someone to fill the position."

The whole idea of matrimony at this time of her life, whether implied or authentic, frazzled the floral-tinted kunoichi.

"Was it truly necessary to follow the rumors though?" she asked desperately.

"Yes."

Sakura did not look convinced or amused by the blunt reply. On the contrary, she looked quite homicidal. Kakashi sighed and decided that another explanation was in order to redeem himself from the edge of the inferno.

"A married woman has a higher status than a single woman. All our targets are married, correct?" Sakura nodded.

"You are one of the few single women at this party. Say you make yourself clear that you are single and not taken. When you start showing interest in our potential contacts, that would create—"

"—Possible scandal," Sakura finished quickly yet continued her protest. "But couldn't I just get to know their wives then?"

After many years of collective theorizing with her teammates, Sakura realized that the irritating assumption of a grin she found so vexing was actually a tender smile that drove her up the wall and into the apex of insanity.

"Not in what you're wearing."

A presence made both shinobis' heads turn to see a man walking out onto the balcony. On noticing the couple, he apologized awkwardly and returned indoors. The juxtaposition of the event baffled Sakura until Kakashi called to her attention its cause.

"Sakura, how long are you planning to look at my eye?" Though he mainly indicated to Sakura's hand that was still entwined in his hair, Kakashi had also made her notice the close proximity of their bodies.

"S-sorry." She jumped away and smoothed out her dress.

"Don't bother," Kakashi replied as he reached over to retrieve the fallen needle.

"We're married, remember?" Extending his arms around Sakura's head, he placed the pin in its previous location while resting his jaw on her temple.

Sakura blushed and picked at the clothed tips of her fingers. The close proximity of another person that was not an opponent had a foreign feeling that made Sakura uneasy. There was no definite resolve to attack or retreat. On top of that, she had been courted, engaged and married in less than an hour to a man whose face she had discovered only a few minutes ago. The level of spontaneity a mission had in a social environment was maddening and threw a wrench into Sakura's mindset.

This was why she had avoided romance in general. Too much insensible disorder.

Kakashi stepped back and held out an arm.

"Shall we, _dear_?" Sakura's shy demeanor disintegrated quickly leaving a bed of emotional dynamite precariously exposed to the flame of rage. Ignoring the fact that Sakura was trembling from suppressing an unruly thirst to indulge in the primeval joys of bloodshed, Kakashi smiled at his new 'wife'.

"I think I'm starting to legitimately hate you."

"Yes dear."

————————————————

The tradesman never made his appearance that night. Something about a new business venture; nothing unusual for businessmen.

The team was never able to regroup for the whole evening. Much to Naruto's annoyance, he was caught in a conversation with Raikage's secretary who happened to be a fan of Jiraiya's Icha Icha series and was ecstatic on learning that the blond had not only met the legendary pervert, but was his disciple.

Sasuke talked of economics with Thompson-sama after he found an excuse to cover his absence, and the two helped Sakura avoid their client as much as possible by profusely denying that she was purposefully evading His Lordship.

Despite their valiant efforts, however, the client managed to find Sakura among the prodigious number of other flamboyantly dressed women. How he had managed to successfully complete such mission was beyond Sakura's understanding and somewhere in Jiraiya's league.

"Ah, Miss Haruno!" Sakura nearly dropped her drink into her lap and immediately regretted that she had failed to do so. After all, that could have become a very valid excuse to leave the man's presence.

"Good-evening..." It was then Sakura realized she did not know her client's name. It was also at the moment she encountered the first feelings of relief in her permanent impromptu date with Kakashi. She held to the hope that the client would have more trouble recognizing her leader than she had a while back.

"Good evening, Ono-sama" Kakashi rose and greeted the host in traditional yet superficial respect.

"Ah, Hatake-san." Damn it. Sakura did not know whether to fall into a mental malaise over her own shortcomings or to stab herself with a hairpin.

"I'm so glad that you made time to attend my party." If he's so happy, why is he staring at me? In response to the perverted daimyo's unblinking gawk, Sakura whipped open her fan to cover the exposed portion of her bosom. God bless accessories.

"Oh ho ho ho! Well, I had always been interested in different cultures, Ono-sama," Sakura replied, trying to appear as senile as possible while concentrating on keeping her eyebrow from convulsing profusely.

His eyes were glued to her fan while he conversed with Kakashi, waiting patiently for Sakura to drop her cover. Sakura, on the other hand, saw her chance to show her disgust with a furiously twitching eyebrow and narrowed eyes. Kakashi had stopped talking to observe the odd situation presented before him.

A series of sharp, loud shots, much like a discharging cannon, cracked through the din of chatter, followed by a scream. Adrenaline shot up Sakura's spine as she shifted to rush into action, but Kakashi had beaten her to the punch.

"Sakura! Stay here and make sure that a hostage situation doesn't occur," was his order. He squeezed Sakura's shoulder and took a step towards the door when a hand grabbed his wrist.

Caught in mild surprise, Kakashi stopped and looked back in question. Sakura's eyes glittered with defiance doubled with resentment.

"I'll go." Of what bone she had been picking since the beginning of the mission, Kakashi had no clue but figured that the issue had been quite consistent throughout the mission. Maybe he should allow her to fight this once; the enemy was clearly not a ninja, since their entrance was too rambunctious and zealous even compared to Naruto's gennin style.

Deciding that Sakura should have her way—at least once—Kakashi stepped aside and swept a hand toward the crowd, allowing the kunoichi to pass. Sakura kicked off her heels and disappeared in a blur.

It seems that you want to fight alone, but Sasuke and Naruto won't help your case, Kakashi thought as his eyes narrowed. He was almost certain what social ailment Sakura was suffering under. The same one Sasuke had suffered six years ago.

She had forgotten what a team was.

————————————————

**Author's Notes:  
**I really don't like this chapter. Thing is, though I can skip a week since I updated twice on my second week; I guess I feel like making up my future absence in July. Don't expect any updates in July since I'll be out of the country (Korea, namely). If there are any, that means I have found an English word processor and internet connection by sheer, dumb luck.

Though I was hoping to make up for the short chapter last week, I found that it wasn't possible, given the fact that I had been at home for only three whole days.

I also doubt that I'll find any time to write up the next chapter in time. I really want to make my chapters longer, but… It's not really working out too well…

"Fanartist"


	7. Feint Operation

**Chapter VII: Feint Operation  
**

Pink tresses cascaded down Sakura's back as she lifted her arms to grasp two senbon in each hand. Swiftly slitting her skirt for better mobility, she dashed behind a balustrade by the stairs leading up to the main entrance and quickly sized up her opponents and her situation.

Four men stood at the door holding a long, oddly shaped concoction of metal and wood. There were several holes punched into the fresco above, about the size of the cylinder connected to the strange invention the men held under their arms. Sakura deduced that some kind of projectile had been emitted from that...thing at an insanely high speed. Making a mental note to avoid crossing paths with the barrel, she shifted her attention to her new set of guests.

All except for one man looked alien to the country. The lone man that did not sport any Thompson-sama-esque features. Armed with the largest supposed projectile-emitting instrument, he seemed to be making some demands which Sakura could hear clearly from her station.

"Ladies and gentlemen! We have not come here to steal anything, so please be somewhat at ease." At least he's straight-forward, Sakura thought, unlike a certain thickheaded senpai I know...

"I would like to know the whereabouts of a certain man by the name of Uchiha Sasuke or Hatake Kakashi."

Sakura nearly dropped her senbon. How did they know that the team was here in the first place? They were supposed to be undercover... Did Kakashi lie to them?

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Sakura gripped her weapons tightly. She would extract information later. Four senbon, four men. Running her tongue over her arsenal, she contemplated her options. Should she just paralyze them all, or leave one standing? Choices choices.

A man looked about nervously, index finger rubbing the edge of the trigger. Though his premonition was accurate, his senses were not as defined and his muddied instincts failed to notice the needle that punctured his lungs a second later. He cried out in warning, but his shrieks were silent and went ultimately unnoticed as he slumped to the ground.

Only the speaker noted an inferior presence and turned in time to see the gunman collapse before he rolled down the stairs. A woman shrieked as two more senbon pierced through the throats of the other two men.

The last needle stuck between the fingers of the leader.

The survivor turned and pulled something on his weapon that made a loud 'ka- chunk!' and to Sakura's shock, he pointed the barrel of his weapon toward the pillar that served as her blockade.

"I see you."

As she scurried away, an ear-splitting boom shook the mansion to its foundation. Sakura surveyed the damage of her previous barricade from the other side of the room. Her eyes widened as she saw that the projectile had not only ripped away the unfortunate piece of architecture, but had bulldozed a balcony as well as leaving a sizable ditch in the garden below.

"Ah, crap. Where's back-up when you need it?" the lone gunman complained as he fiddled with his radio. An object whizzed by the technologically challenged young man and he turned to see a silk fan embedded into the double doors behind him. Using the man's inattention, Sakura rushed in. Her fist collided with a hand, which she pushed away by quickly redirecting the flow and direction of her punch. Another strike toward a critical pressure point was also trapped by the opponent.

The gunman looked back at the kunoichi and blinked at his lovely challenger. Sure, at first he was hesitant when he was told that his life would be in danger due to hired ninjas, especially with his over reactive imagination. But if he could fight ninjas like this, he would gladly sink six feet under without any regrets.

Sakura smirked into the man's face and shifted her hands to form a seal using her captive's hand.

"I'm borrowing your other hand for awhile," she crooned softly. She was only able to perform the fourth seal when the man's body convulsed as an object collided with his body and her routine was interrupted. His eyes went wide before drooping closed. Sakura caught his limp figure to see a kunai protruding from the man's back.

"Thanks for giving me a clear shot." Sasuke stood balanced meticulously on the handrail as he indicated the unconscious man. Understanding and disappointment flooded the kunoichi's face.

"I've sedated him," he stated bluntly, mistaking her expression as one of worry.

"Oh..."

Sasuke looked at her oddly. Noting that she still wore that expression, he wondered if Sakura wanted a hand at interrogation. After all, long pointy things were not exactly objects to sneeze at.

"Oi, Sasuke! Sakura-chan! I got rid of all the other guys around the area!" Naruto leaped easily from ground level to where his two teammates stood and took a deep breath to make an announcement.

"It's alright! We've gotten the situation under control!" he shouted, waving his arms about frantically in good aristocratic taste.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto was not the only one who noted Sakura's lack of interest in reality. Sasuke wondered why Sakura seemed so spacey as of late. As she snapped out of her reverie, she smiled at the two and handed the unconscious man to the Uchiha. Walking over to one of her previous kills, she yanked out a senbon and wiped the pin on the corpse's shirt. She piled her hair on top of her head and stabbed the pink mass, securing the makeshift bun. It has been a while since she let her hair down. She needed a haircut.

"I'll be right back. I have to talk with senpai." With that, she poofed away. Naruto blinked several times.

"Talk with... who?" Naruto was dumbfounded and Sasuke sighed. So he did come.

————————————————

The party had to be called off that night and people slowly dispersed into the rain. There were some people left; that Sakura kept in mind as she sat at the far edge of the balcony, out of the rain but not out of sight for some stragglers. Namely, Gama-Ono...sama. Also, the last time she peeked inside, Naruto and Sasuke were currently deciding who got first dibs on interrogation with a significantly drawn-out janken match. What was originally winner out of five grew to twenty-three.

Despite the two's odd, un-ninja-like quirks, their strength had grown immeasurably combined with their friendship. Both had each other to seek comfort, rivalry, and who-knows-what-else. For some reason, boys became best friends after beating each other into the dirt; the more damage, the deeper the friendship. Basically, a masochistic camaraderie.

And she was jealous.

Sakura bit her lip and swallowed the bitter lump that formed in her throat. What was wrong with her lately? For some reason reuniting herself with her old gennin teammates had become much more bitter than sweet and served to deepen an old wound known as Inferiority. Worst yet, she found that tears were sliding down her face.

Sighing, Sakura stood up and walked into the rain. The beach was visible from where she stood, and the breeze blowing from the ocean was cool. She could cry here and hopefully escape Kakashi's unusually receptive senses.

"Sakura." Speak of the devil.

"Yes?" Though the rain obscured her tears, Sakura did not dare to turn around. It was a strange situation; here she was with tears streaming down her face and acting like there was absolutely no internal turmoil on her behalf.

"Are you alright?"

Sakura 'hmmed' softly and smiled wryly to the sea.

"Yes."

"Hmm." The raindrops grew fatter during the pause and soon Sakura could not discern her tears from the precipitation.

"No," Sakura admitted. Kakashi remained silent. Both were drenched, but neither acted upon their unhealthy choice of location. Sakura appeared to have nothing further to say, so Kakashi decided to speak.

"Why were you crying?"

"I wasn't." Another moment of silence.

"I don't know," she finally muttered, crossing her arms tightly in defense while feeling a bit embarrassed with her constantly mutating answers.

In all honesty, Kakashi wanted to discuss the kunoichi's apparent reluctance in cooperating as a team. Yet a lecture at this time would only serve as a catalyst to the other's anger and there was always the promise of a better time. Unless she was suffering from PMS. Whichever defect that currently plagued Sakura's mind, he hoped it would not resort to emotional hysteria. Besides, there were more pressing matters that needed attention.

Footsteps softly splashed toward where Sakura stood. Sakura counted three splashes before she decided to retreat back indoors.

When she turned, a hand intercepted her face and held her jaw captive.

Kakashi held her chin, disregarding the blank stare of naivety. A few seconds passed and Sakura decided to change pace and glared at the jounin. The latter only tilted his head to the side and moved his head closer to hers. She could feel his breath warming her skin and the prospect of a kiss swamped her mind. Though she continued to glare, Sakura felt her chest tighten as rather sensual images flashed into the theatre of her adolescent mind.

Then he licked her face.

_Did he just…?_ Sakura just stared. Staring seemed to be the most appropriate action since the sheer spontaneity of his actions had left her speechless. In rather recent past events, Ino had given a number of hints and tips on why guys behaved in certain ways at certain times, but… _How was she supposed to react to that and what the hell was that for!_

Kakashi smiled and simply stated, "Your face is salty." There was no doubt about it. Kakashi-senpai was a docile psycho. Sakura realized that there seemed to be only one kind of smile he displayed, and even without his mask, his face was unreadable.

After successfully rendering his case immobile, Kakashi wrapped his arms around Sakura's waist and pulled her into a tight embrace. Removing the senbon supporting her damp hair, he weaved his fingers into her hair and gently tilted her head to murmur into her ear.

"We'll have to move out tonight. Our cover's been blown and it's apparent that someone's trying to hunt us down." A wild goose chase. How romantic.

"Where are we going?"

"Thompson-sama has invited us to stay at his place for several days." Sakura froze.

"_Where!_" she squeaked incredulously. _I am not sleeping in a house of the extended weirdo family. I already have two on my team_, she thought, eyes rolling toward Kakashi and thinking of Naruto.

"If we're invited to someone with his status—"

"No, no. Status or not, I'm not staying _that freak's_ house," she declared, bent on keeping herself out of any pervert's quarters by at least a kilometer. Sleeping in the rain with hypothermia looming in every droplet sounded much more inviting.

"Ha ha, don't worry." Kakashi slightly pulled away and rested his forehead against Sakura's, bringing back ghosts of her childhood forehead complex as well as previous clips from before Kakashi confirmed her shed tears. "The only reason he was interested in your marital status was because he was interested in you."

"I thought he was married," she faltered. His face was a bit too close for comfort.

"The more money you have, the more wives you can hoard. Basically, he has a personalized harem, but don't worry about that," Kakashi replied without missing a beat. Sakura's eye twitched in disgust. 'Don't worry'? What kind of comfort was that after explaining the man's fetish for legal bed-jumping? Sakura felt a bit better about this simulated—read _fake_—marriage to Kakashi-senpai than she had previously had conceived.

"Are you feeling better?" Kakashi asked, noting that Sakura's face had melted into a serene expression.

"Are we still married?"

"Yep." The kunoichi grimaced, making her 'husband' smile.

"Then no."

Kakashi chuckled and broke off all contact. There was a moment where the two just looked at each other. Sakura felt awkward again and dropped her eyes to the ground quite suddenly and began to pick at her gloves again. He's your husband you idiot, she drilled adamantly into her brain, so stop being so tense!

"Ah..." Before she could string a group of meaningless syllables together, something heavy was draped over her shoulders. Sakura looked up to see Kakashi pulling a cloak on top of the jacket she now wore. Finishing his task, he raised a hand.

"Later."

Sakura watched the man disappear in a cloud of smoke and clutched his cloak tightly about her chest. She hadn't realized how cold her underdressed arms or legs had become until she felt the warmth of Kakashi's jacket.

In an effort to assess the previous event, images of what had happened on the balcony were conjured from Sakura's memory. She was proud of the fact that there was absolutely no exchange of romantic mush or fluff other than their little charade. She had not fallen into any kind of infatuated inattention and...and she was just nervous.

"Sakura-chan! Let's go!" Naruto was grinning madly and Sakura assumed that he had won the janken marathon. Sakura turned her head and smiled in response but was caught unaware by the sudden weight she dragged with her head.

Kakashi had taken her senbon.

————————————————

_Gama: _ frog

_Janken: _ Paper, Scissor, Rock (game)

————————————————

**Author's Notes:  
**_FYI: I'm going out of the country on July 7th and returning on August 10th._

Action was cut short because I'm out of practice, if that's the phrase.

Eh... I feel like I have no control over this fic .;

"Fanartist"


	8. Cinderella Prototype

**Chapter VIII: Cinderella Prototype  
**

Thompson-sama had a strange taste in decor, favoring high ceilings and stone floors as well as random busts of foreign men aligning narrow hallways.

Team Seven paid no attention to their rather alien surroundings, focusing intently on a figure slouched in the center of the lobby.

"Yo."

"..." The greeting bounced off Team 7's stony faces and into the equally cold, marble hallways where only darkness accepted his carefree salutation.

The contrast was quite stark between the leader and the rest of the team. Sakura saw that Kakashi had changed into his regular mission fatigues and looked quite healthy and content. Kakashi saw that his team had not eaten dinner and was quite cold and miserable. Naruto was always the dead giveaway.

"I bought ramen." Might as well satisfy the one with a beast within first.

"RAMEN!" The kitsune threw his arms up in the air, setting his sedated prisoner free to fall like a sack of potatoes on the stone floor. Despite his rather long history of ninja training, Sasuke only watched the freed man escape to his tiled refuge with a notable thud. He crossed his arms and huffed. Wasn't his interrogation first anyways.

Kakashi motioned to where Naruto's treasure lied and hoisted the re-imprisoned hostage onto his shoulder.

"Sasuke, your room is across Naruto's. Sakura, yours is on the opposite hall, last door," the leader directed as he shifted the man's weight.

"And what are you planning to do with him?" Sasuke indicated the survivor dangling across his team leader's shoulders.

"A special wake-up call is in order for our new friend."

"Hmph." Sasuke turned to retire for the night. How unfortunate that this mansion did not come with its own interrogation rooms.

————————————————

"Umm..."

"Hm?"

Sakura had not changed out of her torn dress, too absorbed in the amount of color displayed in the floral designs and gold leafing of her surroundings. Her awe had been short-lived when she discovered something that gave her a moderate amount of distress.

"Why... is your bag on the table?" Sakura feared that she already knew the answer to her question. The size of the bed had caught more of her suspicion than her fancy the moment she entered after her attention waned from the walls.

On a glass coffee table, a second backpack sitting comfortably next to hers made Sakura realize the great burden of married life.

Kakashi glanced at his pack, blinked, then walked past her to examine the bags at a closer proximity.

"Is it unsightly?"

"I wouldn't say it that way." Though I think that would be exactly what I would have said, Sakura thought, planting her palms on her hips and raising an eyebrow.

Kakashi twisted his head to look over his shoulder at the kunoichi. Sakura held her ground, expecting him to say something. She shifted her weight to one leg and crossed her arms. Somehow spending time with her ex-teacher wasted much idle time, yet Sakura never felt as if she was truly wasting time and was sucked into Kakashi Time.

A clock chimed somewhere in the mansion, signaling midnight. Kakashi unzipped his vest and carelessly threw his headband and his gloves in a chair by the coffee table. The metal of the hitae-ate clattered against the wooden backrest and teetered a bit before landing on the rug and the gloves overshot the armrest, slapping the wall before falling dejectedly to the floor.

Such haphazard aiming stunned Sakura who expected less plebian behavior from a ninja.

"Take a shower and go to sleep. I'll take the floor." Sakura broke out of her reverie and sighed, making her way to the bathroom. In a moment of mild curiosity, she delayed shutting the door and peeked behind her.

She had a good view of his back. Sakura made a mental note to give a short lecture on assaulting furniture with various articles of clothing on seeing Kakashi shrugging off his vest and attacking the coffee table again. Sakura saw him running a hand through his hair and reached over his back to pull his shirt over his head.

The jounin heard the click of the bathroom door close as he pulled his shirt off. He looked behind him at the closed door in question for a moment before returning to his task. On the other side of the door, Sakura frantically turned on the tap and preoccupied her mind with something other than the hot blush spreading over her face.

_Damn hormones_. Sakura scrubbed extra hard as if scouring her flesh would rid her mind of what she had just witnessed as well as any thoughts that might follow. Avoiding any visual contact with the mirror until she had covered herself with a bathrobe was also necessary.

She forgot to bring a change of clothing into the bathroom.

Well, she had a bathrobe on and it wasn't like she was sleeping in the same bed as Kakashi-senpai. With this in mind, Sakura walked confidently out of the bathroom, brilliantly ignoring her roommate until he plopped a hand on her head.

"If you go to bed with wet hair, it'll smell in the morning." Sakura gave a short laugh to the man who stood before her.

"I didn't expect anything like that from you," she retorted, rolling up her eyes to look at her superior and indicating the buffeted coffee table. All she wanted was to sleep, wet hair and all.

Besides, why did he hone such an interest in hair care?

"Sit down." Sakura avoided eye contact as she sat rigidly at the edge of the bed, dangling her legs off the side. After all, all men were biologically similar. None of them were to be trusted, Sakura thought as she felt the mattress depress behind her.

"Ow!" A towel was shoved rudely into the kunoichi's hair and commenced to dry her hair rather roughly. There was a small duration of time where Sakura needed to find anything to keep herself awake.

"Kakashi-senpai?" Sakura mumbled. Drowsiness threatened to shut her systems down soon.

"Hm?"

"I'm eighteen. I can dry my own hair."

"I know." Tired eyes opened slowly with strained effort.

"...You act differently without your mask on." Now she was desperate. No one knew what this man did in his spare time (other than reading, but that occupied more than his spare time), and primetime television had given Sakura an iron resolution that men should never be trusted to be alone with another female.

"You talk more. And you tend to be a bit more...a bit closer. Physically." There was an emphasis on the last word. Last thing on her mind was following through this whole 'marriage' thing.

There was also another bone that needed picking.

"Why are you drying my hair?" Reasons, all developed from nostalgia, flooded Kakashi's mind but never touched his face. Personal questions he usually avoided due to their intimate nature. Psychological intimacy never ceased to be a subject of discomfort.

Sakura struggled to stay awake, unaware of what was running through her former teacher's mind. There was that trademark delay again. Maybe he was stalling. Or finding the answer. Or worse yet; he had an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"I've never had a little sister." The reply caught her off guard. Little sister... She repeated the phrase in her mind several times and smiled. Well, Team 7 had always been a family, and it was actually fun having sibling-like entities around her. Though previously she had thought of Kakashi as more of a fatherly figure…

Scooting into the bed to make room for her legs, Sakura sat cross-legged and relaxed despite the scratching she felt at her scalp.

Little sister. She could get used to that.

————————————————

If anyone had seen Sakura an hour after she had flopped down to sleep, her open eyes and blank stare would have made the impression of a freshly slaughtered corpse.

Until she sighed.

She couldn't sleep. Even after all the excitement and horror she had witnessed at the party, she couldn't sleep. A glass of milk would be nice right now, she thought, stepping softly out of bed and jumping over Kakashi who was supposedly asleep.

As Sakura made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen, she heard a deliberate hissing noise. Looking about the pantry, she wondered who else would be awake at such and ungodly hour.

"Come! Get in, quick," a feminine voice rasped as a hand beckoned through a crack in a door of a closet. Sakura did a double take of the hallway and slipped into the room with her summoner. Before she could open her mouth, the woman shushed Sakura.

"They've closed the borders. You can only stay for several days here." Sakura squinted in effort to see any noticeable contours of the owner of the panicked voice. The muted moonlight that seeped through the crack of the door was of little help.

"Why do they want Kakashi and Sasuke?" Sakura asked. This woman seemed quite intent on keeping her team safe. Why, Sakura decided she needed to know after she gained information.

Even in the inhumanly sparse light, Sakura sensed the woman shake her head vigorously.

"They don't need it, but they want it." The woman stopped abruptly and listened intently to the silence. Sakura could not hear anything. Maybe the lady had a sixth sense, since she ran out the door and to the adjacent window in such a hurry to escape.

"Don't talk in front of paintings," were her last words before she vanished through the open window pane.

"Wait!" Sakura ran to the window. There was still more she wanted to know.

"Who are 'they'? What about the paint—" The mystery woman had vanished.

Sakura quickly left the room and hurried back to bed. Pondering on the barrage of incomplete information, she could not help feeling lost and insufficient. She had and idea what 'It' was, but not 'They'...

Sighing, the kunoichi decided that a meeting was in order in the morning.

But not in front of paintings.

————————————————

**Author's Notes:  
**I've received some reviews that asked for more description of Kakashi's face. The reason I resisted writing any description other than 'cute' was because that's all we know of Kakashi, and to go beyond that would, in my opinion, destroy the sense of detachment we (I?) sense in our favorite ninja.

And yes, I'm back.

"Fanartist"


	9. Calm Before Implosion

**Chapter IX**

"Ugh..." The unidentified gunman awoke to find that his vision had digressed into the second dimension as all he could see was a grid of white squares. Blinking several times, he tried to put his situation into perspective. The last thing he remembered was fighting a pink-haired woman with killer needles, and wherever he was, he found that whole body was immobile save his facial muscles and fingertips

He realized, as he was staring at the topside of a rather large chandelier, that he was somehow tied firmly to the ceiling.

Damn ninjas must have taken me hostage, the man immediately concluded, gritting his teeth and testing whatever bound him to the ceiling..

A door opened and a man with spiky blond hair sauntered in with a cup of coffee and a cheese danish.

The gunman continued to stare at his visitor, debating on his chances in escaping once he gained the attention of this stranger. He didn't look like a ninja and certainly did not act like one, seeing that the man choked on some bread crumbs and downed what seemed to be his scalding hot beverage.

After the blond man stopped coughing from his performance, his head snapped up to acknowledge his host and gave him a toothy grin.

"Guu-du mou-ni-ing!" No, the gunman thought. He's definitely not a ninja.

————————————————

The morning was quite uneventful as Sakura and Kakashi arose sleepily to the 8:30 alarm and attended to their morning duties in a daze. The intense summer heat did not set in this early in the morning, but the air was already warm and promised much humiduty.

Other than a muttered "good morning," both acted extremely accustomed to each other's presence by ignoring it. Both weaved around each other's paths with eyes half-closed and minds comparable to the undead.

However, their inattention to one another was banished once there was a knock on the door. Sakura immediately shoved Kakashi, who was emerging from the bathroom, back into the lavatory before rushing to the door.

She threw the door open where Sasuke stood at the entrance with a raised eyebrow.

"Good morning!" was Sakura's cheerful exclamation before there was a loud thud sounding from the bathroom.

"…" An awkward look momentary passed the kunoichi's face before she focused on her teammate's morning motive.

"What's up?"

"Do you know where Kakashi is? I haven't been able to find him all morning and I have no idea where his room is." Sakura's brain raced frantically through her limited morning vocabulary to find an excuse to delay any replies that would put the shinobi in the state she had witnessed at the party last night.

"I guess he'll join us for breakfast. I need to change!" Sakura clutched the hem of the bathrobe at her bosom, attesting to her lack of decency as she slammed the door in the Uchiha's face.

Sakura sure is chipper in the morning, Sasuke thought as he retreated down the hall.

Her spectator now absent, Sakura turned to see Kakashi coming out of the bathroom once again.

"That was uncalled for," he said as he reached for his shirt.

"So was our marriage," Sakura countered.

"Hai, hai." There was something odd about seeing Kakashi in a white T-shirt. Or was it because she had only seen him wearing dark clothing for six years minus two hours from since she had first met him?

Kakashi turned toward the window, his back facing the kunoichi. As he pulled off his shirt, she noticed something that had escaped her eyes last night and immediately appeared behind her leader, examining the man's back and holding the hem of his shirt over her head. Kakashi immediately threw his hands forward, catching himself on the window frame before he was knocked outside.

"Stand up straight," the medic commanded. Her patient obeyed wordlessly.

Amongst the maze of scars, Sakura found the wound he had received when Kakashi had shielded her from the rain of shuriken back at the inn. She leaned closer to examine the two-day-old injury and rested her right hand on Kakashi's shoulder to keep the shirt from falling into her view. Admittedly, she had postponed his check-up a bit too far, but fat chance she would confess that out loud.

Like most men, Kakashi never found the hospital to be the most inviting piece of architecture in Konohagure. He had never had a check-up for as long as he could remember; an intricate weave of scares verified his indifference to modern medicine.

"Alright, looks like it's healed enough. I can heal you completely now," Sakura diagnosed as she gathered chakra in her left hand.

"So how far are you in your training?" Seeing the pace she was healing a single wound gave him the impression that the time she had been a medic-nin was not very long.

"A few months shy of three years," Sakura replied but quickly continued.

"There's a lot of memorization and tests to complete before becoming a medic-nin. It's more studying than anything else in the first two years and the next few months are all testing."

"How many months?"

"Five." No wonder there seemed to be a shortage of certified medic-nins lately. Tsunade had created another level in the Inferno for potential medics.

"All the senpai's said that the physical examination was added and the program really got tougher since Tsunade-sama became Hokage."

Sakura shifted her attention to the next gash. This one had not been healing as quickly, but it was still no problem.

"Knowledge comes before field experience."

Kakashi mused on this new perspective on Sakura's career choice. On achieving ANBU status early in life, he had always looked upon people to who had a knack for schoolwork with a certain amount of respect. The unexpectedly studious nature of becoming a medic-nin fit Sakura like a glove, and yet…

"Wouldn't it be better to work in a hospital?" The atmosphere of the room suddenly grew heavy. The sound of chakra swirling about Sakura's hand became clearly audible in the weighted silence of the room.

"I'm done!" Sakura immediately grabbed a change of clothing in hasty retreat to the bathroom.

"Sakura." She stopped.

Kakashi sensed that Sakura was angry again. Whatever was the reason happened to be, he silently demanded for an answer in this round. Sakura stood with her back towards her leader. The burden she had harbored for six years weighed heavily in the clammy morning air.

"Do you th—" Sakura took in a sharp intake of air before letting out a long, shaky breath. Kakashi waited until she had regained her composure.

"Do you think I'm weak?"

————————————————

"Hey you down there, can you get me down?" The strangely whiskered man stopped chewing on his breakfast to ponder for several seconds before looking back up at him with his conclusion.

"Sure!"

"Really? Thanks!" Finally, a break, the gunman thought. The other man, however, paradoxically walked leisurely toward a wall—

"Umm… Don't you need…" —and continued to walk vertically up its side.

"…a ladder…?" the man stared at his liberator taking a leisurely stroll around the paintings and faux columns. Who was this guy?

"Name's Uzumaki Naruto," the man introduced as he knelt by the horizontally challenged man.

"My last name's Bradford. My first name's Shiro." Naruto cocked his head.

"Bu-ra-du-fo-duu?" He frowned slightly in confusion before giving the man another smile.

"Well, I'll be interrogating your first today! If I can't get enough information, my friend Sasuke'll take over after lunch!" Two days into his assignment and the gunman already received his greatest revelation; Ninjas are weird.

Any more great revelations and my brain's gonna explode, thought the discombobulated hostage. He had only one thought on his mind as he watched Naruto forming seals to release whatever jutsu that plastered the man to the ceiling.

_I wanna go home._

————————————————

Kakashi scratched his head. When she was young, he never thought she was weak per se. Unreliable, yes, but not really weak.

"No," he answered after a short internal debate.

"Liar." Sakura whipped around to face Kakashi. Six years worth of inner turmoil was written as anger in her features.

"Liar," she reiterated, "None of you three ever left me alone. It's always 'Stay here', 'I'll finish it' or 'I'm OK'! You think I don't know what that means?!"

"Sakura."

"I didn't work at the hospital because I don't want to keep feeling weaker than you!" She squeezed her eyes shut as her voice rose in volume.

"Sakura."

"But none of you guys even acknowledge me!"

"Sakura!" Accusations halted at the drastic change in not so much the volume, but the tone of the voice. Other than during the survival training lecture her ex-teacher had given her the day she became a genin, he had never called her name so severely. His face had also become darker and unsympathetic.

He was mad.

Sakura averted her gaze to the floor. She finally told him. Not in the most eloquent fashion, but she told him. Now the only thing was to wait for an answer, and waiting for an answer from Kakashi was comparable to spending two years in a straightjacket under several hundred meters of dirt. In short, his response was not the worst part of waiting. The gap between dialogues was the killer.

"I'm not too sure what makes you believe that we do not see you as an equal. You have your own strengths and weaknesses just like the rest of the team. You can do things Naruto, Sasuke, or I cannot do, and that's what makes us a team.

"However! The fact stands that you are a chuunin among jounins. Even if we had another chuunin assigned into this team, I have no doubt that the fact that we have a teammate with a lower rank will unconsciously make us think that we have to substitute for the gap in between the two positions."

Concentrating on the cloth she clutched in her fingers, the kunoichi continued to stare at the floor with nothing in particular in mind. He was right. Why did he always have to be right? Her mind kicked in high gear, utilizing all her mental processes to find a way to get away from _him_. Since walking away without saying anything would be probably further her leader's disappointment, she needed a more tasteful method of getting out of the room to change.

Kakashi's face softened. Reaching out, he gently pulled the kunoichi into an embrace. Last thing he wanted was team dynamic falling apart because of a simple lecture.

Sakura rested her cheek on the man's shoulder. She was growing hungry and was in no mood to argue. At least that was what she told herself as she ignored that tiny voice informing her that she had lost another argument.

"They closed the borders," Sakura murmured into the man's shoulder. At least that statement could go undisputed, though it was a rather pathetic attempt in saving face.

"Ah."

Silence.

"Senpai?"

"Hmm?"

"Do all sibling fights end up like this?" Kakashi thought for a while before deciding to fess up.

"Dunno. I'm an only child."

"… Me too."

————————————————

Since Naruto won out of forty-nine games of janken, Sasuke preoccupied himself with memorizing the details and layout all twenty rooms as well as meditating on several large busts in the hallways marked as 'Caesar'. With Naruto in short supply, everything seemed to become so much peaceful.

And boring.

A pair of maids wearing light yellow yukatas caught the Uchiha's attention. Not wishing for their stream of gossip to be disturbed, he swiftly moved behind the large pedestal that held 'Caesar' where he could eavesdrop on his victims.

"…see that blond ninja? Don't you think he's adorable?!"

"That Naruto guy? I don't know… he's not what I'd call a ninja. I thought he was annoying." My sentiments exactly, the dark-haired shinobi concurred silently with the taller maid. The shorter maid pouted at the other's disapproval

"I think Sasuke-sama's a lot cooler!" Sasuke withheld the will to gag.

"But he seems so cold," the shorter argued.

"He's so mysterious… and his eyes…"The disillusioned servant sighed as Sasuke suppressed the urge to administer Reality Check. The other huffed.

"If you're going for mysterious, you might as well go for that masked guy. Especially since the only thing you can see of his face is an eye."

"Kakashi? Naw, he's taken."

"Taken?" Taken? Sasuke chorused in his mind. He barely knew anything about his former sensei even after six years and these two knew about his ex-teacher's love life? The unfairness of life had now reached breaking point.

"Yeah, we have a ninja couple in our house! Don't you think that's cute?" Ninja couple… Sasuke was afraid that he knew what was going on and felt the fuses blowing in his brain for the second day in a row.

Dammit, not again.

————————————————

**Author's Notes:**  
This chapter was too serious for my/your own good.

I decided to make my chapters longer at the worst possible time. The monitor in my room is going completely blurry, so I end up having to type this fanfic by turning the monitor on and off (but mostly off) to clear it up.

They said something about getting and LCD monitor, which I hope is true.

Anyways, someone asked me to post on good Kakashi/Sakura fanfics back in my 7th chapter. I, in truth, really don't want to, so you'll have to either go to my profile or use the search function by typing in 'kakasaku'. Or go browse the Kakashi/Sakura community on Livejournal (go to my profile for the link).

"Fanartist"


	10. Suffix Play

**Chapter X: Suffix Play**

The rain pattered on the glass dome of the gazebo above Sakura. Thompson-sama had a maddeningly geometric garden. Bushes and trees were cut into perfectly symmetrical shapes, and the whole systematic nature of the garden gave the kunoichi an unpleasant sense of over-exposure. With everything so perfect, I wonder if an average person has ever spent and evening here without going clinically insane, she commented to herself cynically.

Sitting on the bench that trimmed the inside of the silo-shaped edifice in her ninja fatigues, she waited for her teammates to arrive. After the mystery woman had revealed a rather incomplete list of facts Sakura deemed to be important, she was determined to share her knowledge _today_. Preferably this morning.

But Naruto was interrogating, Sasuke looked too sickly this morning, and Kakashi... well, she didn't want to be alone with him unless circumstances became dire. Unfortunately, dire circumstances seemed to pop up like worms after the rain and tiptoeing around them was impossible. But scheduling the team meeting to a later time was a good start.

Sakura's thoughts meandered from home to here, touching on a variety of subjects before settling on Sasuke-kun. He had been acting oddly after breakfast, and she offered to check him for food poisoning. While Sasuke refused medical treatment for his unidentified illness, the young jounin was quite adamant about discussing a matter that seemed to have greatly perturbed him, leading the kunoichi to the small gazebo hidden amongst the odd tear-drop fir trees on time.

Usually everyone arrived two hours later when Kakashi was included into the meeting.

"No need to be so stealthy, Sasuke-kun." The jounin emerged from the back of the gazebo behind the chuunin, taking a seat on the bench beside her.

"So...um..." Sasuke fidgeted uncomfortably next to the kunoichi.

"Sasuke-kun?" Sakura also caught onto the shinobi's uneasiness. Usually when Sasuke had a question for her, he would force Naruto to ask in his place. Especially if there was a high probability that the answer would contain an assault both verbal and physical.

But Naruto was busy. And there were no other buffers available.

"I heard," he started slowly, "that you were..." glancing around nervously, the Uchiha coughed and uttered some word into his fist that eluded Sakura.

"Come again?" she requested, straining her ears. He tried again, this time using speed as his defense.

"Iheardyouweremarried." Sakura flushed in embarrassment before bursting out laughing.

"Why? Are you jealous?" she teased. A forgotten corner of her psyche tugged at her heart, wishing such claim was true. Her half-joke went unnoticed as Sasuke answered with his trademark severity.

"No, just..." The shinobi paused to search for the most appropriately eloquent phrase for the moment.

"Creeped out."

"Well aren't we full tact this morning?" Sakura retorted. Though her marriage with Kakashi was not even in existence, never mind legal, she felt snubbed by Sasuke's comment.

"I'm serious, Sakura. The man's old enough to be your father."

"Ma, I'm not that old, Sasuke-_kun_." Sasuke visibly winced as Kakashi appeared in a puff of smoke with a deflated Naruto. Obviously the interrogation had not gone well or the information was less than satisfactory.

"Now that everyone's here," Sakura exclaimed, still a bit miffed by Sasuke's comment, "let's share what we've learned today!"

"I'll go first." Naruto waved a hand carelessly in the air. He heaved a sigh, making Sakura realize once again how much six years had changed the usually hyperactive ninja. Stuffing his fists into his pockets, Naruto began his report.

"The guy's name is Shiro. It turns out that he was the leader of the group we wiped out last night. About the time we made our way to the Lighting Country, he was hired to hunt us down. Specifically, to detain Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei, dead or alive. No further information was given to their team.

"Though he was the only one to meet their patron, all transactions were done in a dark room. Judging from the voice, he says that his client is probably in his forties or fifties. No other details have been disclosed."

"...He cracked pretty easily," Sasuke noted suspiciously. Naruto grinned.

"He was paid in advance." Sakura took that as her cue to speak.

"Oh wait wait!" Something had popped into Naruto's mind before Sakura articulated a syllable. "I remember! At the party, I talked with Raikage-sama's secretary and he doesn't know about this weapon we've heard about."

"Are you sure?"

"Ninja's honor." Well, that was a dead end. The possibility of the closest man to the Raikage knowing nothing of the weapon was hard to swallow, yet the possibility that the weapon did not exist was also feasible. If that was the case, then the longer the team resided in the country, the more unnecessary danger they were bringing upon Konoha. They were stalemated in the most disagreeable situation since Naruto's eyes first witnessed the sheer amphibious nature of Ono-sama.

Sakura looked about questioningly for anyone else that had any more information. Sasuke shrugged and Kakashi...well, Kakashi never did anything except save her from one embarrassment that would only lead her to a whole mission's worth.

"Alright!" Shaking herself out of her resentful daze, Sakura commenced to report all that she had learned last night.

"Last night, I received intelligence from an unknown source that the borders of the Lightning Country have been closed and that the paintings are bugged. I don't know much about the person that gave me this intelligence, but she doesn't seem very old and is about five centimeters shorter than me." Kakashi scratched his head and briefly made eye contact with the other two jounin.

"That sounds like half the women living in the mansion," Sasuke stated blandly.

"I asked her if she knew why those people were looking for you two," Sakura indicated to Sasuke and Kakashi, "and she said 'they don't need it, but they want it'. My guess is that the person who hired that Shiro guy was looking for the Sharingan."

Sasuke smirked and rolled his eyes to the surrounding bushes. "Apparently whoever wants the Sharingan hired more incompetents to hunt us down." A loud bang made startled three of the four shinobi into action. Before breaking formation, Sakura received a glimpse of Sasuke desperately clutching his left arm. They were using that projectile-machine again.

The first man Sakura encountered went into a rabid frenzy and discharged his weapon in rapid at a succession at everything inanimate around him. While tinkering with the man's mind would have greatly amused the kunoichi, her faith in humanity would have quickly diminished once she found her prey so pathetic that killing him would reduce the suffering of those around him.

A well placed senbon stopped the man's hysterical rampage and two more sent him to the next world. A weapon that had the potential to kill instantaneously gave no room for hesitation, especially to those who lost their marbles once exposed in battle.

Listening to the abrupt cease fire in the distance, Sakura figured that she spent too much time waiting for the man to run out of ammunition. The situation developed awkwardly when a servant chanced upon the kunoichi gathering her needles. A spray of blood gushed out of the dead man's throat where Sakura had impaled him, leaving the poor girl in a state of mental shock Tsunade-sama herself would have found some trouble in dispensing a suitable remedy.

"A-ah..." Sakura turned to the stupefied servant hiding behind a square tree.

"Yes?"

"Th-the lady..." she blubbered out some other sounds while flailing about her hands in the direction of the mansion.

"Tea," she finally articulated the subject of her master's request to the blood-splattered shinobi. Sakura replied, "At what time?"

Instead of attempting to use her unreliable voice box again, the distraught girl held up three fingers. Looking back down at her victim, Sakura scratched her head. This predicament had become quite troublesome.

"Do I have to bring... er, my husband with me?" The girl seemed relived that the question had been asked and nodded vigorously.

"Alright then." Sakura watched the girl rushed away before jumping onto the glass dome of the gazebo in search of her comrades. Considering how much time it took her to take out one bug, the others would have finished off the whole colony.

"Sakura-chan!" A distressed Uzumaki cried out from under the kunoichi. She looked down at her associate, only to send the blond jounin deeper into agony.

"Are you alright?!"

"Yeah, I just pulled a senbon out too fast and got sprayed." She jumped down to stand beside Kakashi who was expressing some concern over Sasuke's bleeding arm.

"Here, let me see," Sakura said as she gently pushed the Copy Ninja aside. The other two ninjas huddled around the Uchiha as Sakura traded her fingerless gloves and reached into her belt pack for surgical ones.

Cutting the cloth away with chakra, she observed the damage while raising the shinobi's arm gingerly with her left hand.

The projectile had gone right through, leaving a small, yet profusely bleeding gash. After giving a blood-stopping pill to the patient, she gathered up chakra once again and concentrated on closing the hole. First hand field experience was quite different from working in the confines of a hospital.

"Naruto, go into my room and you'll find extra gauze in the bathroom."

"OK!" As Naruto sped away, the remaining three slowly rose to make their way to the manor. Sasuke glanced at Sakura on his left, then Kakashi on his right. They said that they were married, but nothing seemed to have changed at all between them. Or maybe...

"Did you two fight?"

"Hm?" Sakura blinked at Sasuke's question. Obviously she missed something, whereas Kakashi did not.

"We had a little spat this morning, but it's all good right now."

"Really," was the skeptical reply.

"Huh? Wait, what's all good?" Marriage had slipped the kunoichi's mind as she desperately attempted to grasp the men's alien topic.

Kakashi insinuated a smiled and reached over to flick off the blood crusted on Sakura's cheek.

"I'll tell you later, Sakura-_chan_."

————————————————

It turned out that he didn't have to. After Naruto met his team in the grand dining room, his inquiry regarding the extra bag in Sakura's room led to Sasuke recapping the hyperactive blond time-bomb of her 'marriage'. Though the kunoichi would have sorely wished to let the truth be known, she had the unfortunate luck of her concentration currently ingrained into healing the Uchiha.

As she finished up, Sakura found Naruto traversing up and down the emotional spectrum with much dynamics, ranging on topics to as why he was not invited to the wedding and what lesser youma possessed the two into holy matrimony.

"Oi, Kakashi-sensei! You tricked her, didn't you?!" An accusatory finger pointed straight at the Kakashi's one visible eye. Naruto's sharp insight made Sakura wonder if she had made her antipathy too conspicuous.

"A Cyclops like you can't even get a date with genjutsu, let alone get laid."

"Naruto!" Sakura stabbed the offending jounin in the spine with a free senbon. Sasuke and Kakashi's eye(s) went wide at the brutality the kunoichi displayed, though Kakashi had been taken aback more by the fact that Sakura had just defended him.

"Gah! Sakura-chan," whined the punctured kitsune, blood and tears flowing freely from the select perforations in his body.

"That _Cyclops_ happens to be married to _me_, whether _you_ like it or not!" Or whether she likes it or not, Kakashi added silently. But considering that her reaction had been more embellished than anticipated, he wondered if complaints to their arrangement were truly valid. Or maybe it was just a matter of pride?

The medic tossed her impossibly rose-colored hair and headed for the double doors behind Sasuke with three pairs of eyes following her exit. As all three braced for a tile-shattering slam as the door closed, the kunoichi alternatively stopped and poked her head back in.

"Kakashi-_kun_," she sang with in a deviously charming voice, "Thompson-sama's wife invited us for tea and she wants you there too-♥"

"Tea?" the three men chorused. After being doused by a light spray of blood, she goes off to drink—of all things—tea. Kakashi scratched his head. There was irony in that statement he could not pinpoint but since it was not important, he did not press further upon the matter.

"Alright then."

"And take off your mask." Naruto grinned and nudged Sasuke who looked indifferent only at surface level. As Sakura skipped away in a disturbing display of joy, Kakashi turned to the other two jounin and stopped scratching on seeing the strange reactions of his other teammate.

"Hm? What is it?" Naruto cleared his throat and found the tiles to be the most mind-blowing achievement of mankind. Sasuke only huffed and threw his glance to the far corner of the ceiling.

"Nothing," they replied in unison.

————————————————

Sakura found a servant outside of her room that relayed to her an ornate piece of silk she identified as a kimono. What was up with rich people and dressing up their guests was beyond the woman's knowledge, yet she accepted the clothes graciously.

It was a kimono alright. A houmongi, to be exact.

Sakura sighed. Her parents haven't even bought her a furisode and she was promoted to wearing a houmongi. At least she learned how to put this garish blanket of a dress on back in her Ninja Academy days. If her memory served her right, it was the course right after flower arranging back when she met Ino. Everyone had to take the class again before they graduated from the Academy, which was not one of the kunoichi's better memories.

She always needed help tying her obi.

"Need help?" Sakura turned to see Kakashi holding up the irritating strip of cloth before him. The man was wearing a dark blue and grey kimono with a haori, hakama and... that mask. Sakura turned her back in accepting his assistance.

"Will you take off that ridiculous piece of cloth?" Kakashi reached around to wrap the embroidered square of cloth around the kunoichi. He saw that rebuke sauntering down the Road of Life and had done nothing to prepare against its fury.

"No, I rather like it." Except flat out denying it. Sakura humphed. She had to admit that the ensemble was not as much of an eyesore as she had anticipated, so she stopped the argument. He did not blatantly cover his Sharingan; a reason in which she found enough gratitude to be satisfied.

Much to Sakura's annoyance, Kakashi had no idea how to tie a drum knot, sending the two on their way after twenty minutes of obi-torture.

As the two walked made their way to the tea room, Sakura remembered a item she had forgotten to discuss at the gazebo that morning.

"Kakashi-senpai! Now that our cover's blown, does that mean I can call you 'sensei'?"

"You don't call your husband 'sensei', Sakura_-san_."

"You don't call them 'senpai' either." Kakashi chuckled.

"Mou, if you don't like either of them, you can always call me 'nii-chan'." Sakura snickered and slapped his arm playfully before laughing out loud.

"I'll eat your arm before I call you that _in your dreams!_"

"Hello." A soft voice interrupted the jovial bantering between the two shinobi. Kakashi immediately took notice and bowed in recognition. Sakura, who was significantly shorter than her male counterpart, could not see anything before following suit. So the bizarre blond man married a natural inhabitant. How unexpected.

"You must be Thompsan-sama's wife," the jounin addressed as he straightened up. Sakura followed suit. And drew in a sharp breath of surprise.

"Pleased to meet you." The height, the voice and all the vague contours fell into place from the previous night. Sakura smiled back and bowed.

"The pleasure is all mine."

She was the woman in the pantry.

————————————————

Houmongi: Formal/Semi-formal kimono for married women.

Furisode: Formal/Semi-formal kimono for unmarried women twenty and up.

Obi: A sash used to tie a kimono.

#Hakama: Um... Large pleated pants. Kinda looks like a dress.

-Haori: A 'Kimono coat'

————————————————

**Author's Notes: **  
This chapter was quite educational, no? If it was, I'm terribly sorry. I know most of us just started school; forgive me.

I think my betas died. So I'll upload the edited version once they come back to life.

Marriage life isn't all hearts, wine and roses. That's what I'm trying to portray in the fic, but I don't know how well it's coming along. In fact, I have little to no control over the future of this fanfic. At some time, I might even have to go on hiatus in order to sort out the plot. Fortunately, I'm going so slow that the possibility is quite low.

**Drops of Rain:** I usually update weekly. Any changes will be noted in my profile.

**Gurl2000:** Sakura is not 'dissin on the boys', but she's a not happy with the fact that they treat her more than just a teammate. I'm making a website for Glass Castle, so in-depth information can be found there.

"Fanartist"


	11. Selfish

**Chapter XI**

There were rich people and there was their money.

Then there was their eerie fetish for dressing up anyone that did not have the 'appropriate' attire.

Sakura sat next to Kakashi wondering what to do. All the color and flawless craftsmanship in the pillows and screens had long lost the kunoichi's interest. Brought up as a proper young woman, she had waited for the hostess to offer a conversation, a slice of fruit, a sharpened slab of metal to end the monotonous exchange of words.... Anything, just anything that would deflect her attention from that itch developing at the base of her neck.

"Dear, I'd like to show Sakura-san around the estate." Mrs. Thompson finally seized the moment of silence between the two men to entertain her own guest, much to the kunoichi's relief. Her legs had been growing stiff, and she doubted that any grace was left in her limbs after kneeling for and extended period of time.

"Well then, I suppose I'll show Kakashi around some of my favorite haunts." I suppose when you have a house twice the size of the Hokage monument you're on first-name basis with anyone you wish, Sakura reflected as she struggled to her feet.

"Would you like a cigarette?" Thompson-sama extended a pale hand to offer a white stick of elegant lung-decomposers as the two men made their exit. Kakashi, of course, declined with illegible courtesy. Sakura watched the two men disappear out of the rice-paper covered sliding door. Wondering exactly where Thompson-sama planned to take Kakashi, Sakura found herself troubled by the potential similarities of the two men's interest. She had to burn those Icha Icha books before some unfortunate maid managed to find one.

A gentle hand brought Sakura's attention to her hostess. The lady before her smiled gently as she motioned to the door. Thompson-sama's wife was a rather young, well-bred sort of woman. She was either in her late teens or early twenties, and sources pointed ardently to the possibility that this was not the man's first wife.

"Come, I'll show you around the garden."

"H-hai," Sakura answered nervously. Hopefully Naruto and Sasuke-kun should be finished disposing the corpses by now.

————————————————

While Thompson-sama made himself comfortable at his desk, Kakashi surveyed the various books lining the man's study. The blond man puffed leisurely on his smoke and watched the ninja stare at foreign characters set in leather covers.

"So how long are you planning to stay here?" The question was directed at Kakashi's scarred eye as it had been the whole conversation when Thompson-sama realized that the shinobi never opened it.

"Have we worn out our welcome?"

"Oh no no no! It's nothing like that! I was actually wondering if you could stay a little longer. After all, there seems to be some turmoil going on between the Lightning Country and its southern neighbors." Kakashi contemplated on this snippet of information to what he had learned from Sakura. Though in one perspective the facts lined up quite nicely, there were too many holes in both pieces of information to come to such a conclusion.

"Well then, I suppose we have little choice—"

"Ah! Yes! Stay here as long as you wish!"

"—than to leave immediately." The man fell silent to size up his opponent. He had never argued with a ninja and gut instinct told him that he would lose if he did. Unless he could corner him into a situation where common courtesy would be his downfall...

"How unfortunate. So when are you planning on leaving?"

"As soon as possible."

"Will you stay at least be staying for dinner?" Kakashi's suspicions were roused, but even he had no choice but to accept the offer. Pervert or not, he was still their host and even if the team did leave at this moment, they would not even reach the border by nightfall.

"Yes," was his nonchalant reply. His uneasiness went undetected.

"Good! Then that's settled." The man snuffed his cigarette in the ashtray and rose from his seat. "After dinner we'll have the women join us for some sake."

Sake? Kakashi couldn't remember the last time he had anything alcoholic to drink. His first was on his twentieth birthday and after that.... He needed to get out more often.

"Sounds good."

————————————————

"Aw geez! He never takes off his mask!" Naruto and Sasuke were watching inconspicuously from between the balustrades of the second-floor hallway. Naruto despaired at Kakashi's disobedience and Sasuke said nothing but was clearly disappointed.

"Who never takes off their mask?" The two shinobi stared at the gunman. To some extent, his existence was forgotten until Naruto had brought up a dilemma: What do we do with him?

Actually, keeping the man alive was a good option. Shiro seemed to know much about the technology used by their pursuers. On the other hand the kid was the curious type, and annoyingly so. Sasuke attested to that feature, claiming that the specified attribute could lead to a kunai lodged in the man's throat one fateful morning. All blood and gore compliments of a very annoyed Uchiha survivor.

Sasuke kneeled by the prisoner, kunai drawn.

"I'm cutting you loose for now. And if you try to escape..." What was a suitable punishment? The Uchiha looked to the former prankster of Konoha for help. Naruto blinked for awhile and suggested the most sadistic form of torture he could invoke in the smallest time frame.

"We'll neuter you."

————————————————

The sun was beginning to set, making the faux pond glitter as the sunlight reflected off the surface of the water. However, it was the picturesque view of the lilies and lazy catfish the kunoichi found so attractive.

"Yuko-san, I don't recall seeing you at the party." Though Yuko smiled that soft smile again, Sakura could see a trace of bitterness.

"Thompson-sama went with his third wife." The lack of expression in her voice contrasted greatly with the amount of disgrace she had just brought upon herself. I was right, Sakura thought. She isn't his first wife.

"Sakura-san, may I ask how old you are?" The pink-haired kunoichi's actions struck the hostess to be a bit juvenile, thus leading to suspicion. Without shifting her attention from the tri-tone fish to her young hostess, Sakura answered without a thought.

"Eighteen." The woman's mouth opened slightly in astonishment. Judging by the couple's sociable relationship, Yuko-san had thought the couple was quite young, but not _that_ young.

"Forgive me for my intrusion, but how old is your husband?"

"Um..." Sakura quickly added eight years to her age, assuming that she had met Kakashi when he was twenty years old. He didn't look that old, after all.

"Twenty-six. It's August, so he's twenty-six," Sakura added to conceal her moment of uncertainty.

"How did you two meet?"

"He was my teacher." Sakura stopped. The prospective reaction of high society and this bit of information would be explosive as well the range of scandalous gossip around their pre-marital relationship. How would aristocracy react to someone married to their teacher? With any luck, they would gossip and romanticize about the fact after she reverted back to Miss Haruno and was turning in her report that had conveniently omitted several unimportant events during the course of the mission.

Back in the plane of reality, Sakura wondered why she was engaging in small talk. As far as she knew, no one was in the garden and the possibilities of a potential ninja attacks were unlikely. After all, the only people who had attacked the team were all alien to this country.

Choosing her words carefully, Sakura decided to test the dependability of her senses.

"Do you know about 'them'?" she asked innocently.

The other woman looked as innocent as Sakura as she replied, "I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about." Both women fell silent. Either Yuko-san was paranoid, or she knew something Sakura did not. In any case, questioning the matter was not wise.

The sun had disappeared over the horizon but the clouds still held their fiery color, and Sakura could no longer see anything below the surface of the water.

With a sweep of her sleeve, Yuko gestured elegantly toward the mansion. "Come, dinner should be ready."

————————————————

"So this thing is called a gun," Naruto said as he pivoted the cylinder.

"No, that's the cylinder and those are the bullets."

"So this is a cylinder?" Naruto took out a bullet.

"I thought that was the gun," Sasuke pointed to the cylinder.

"No, that's a bullet."

"That was the bullet? I thought the gun holds the bullets."

"It's the cylinder that holds the bullets for the gun."

A pause.

"The world is full of mysterious things," Naruto philosophized. Sasuke scratched his head. Shiro sighed.

Ninjas are... weird.

————————————————

She was back in that position again. Kneeling beside Kakashi and imagining the joys of a tea-free life. Once she got back to Konoha, she wanted to _walk_ and drink _soda_. At the same time, too. Such activities were hard to come by in the mansion and the kunoichi was desperately pining for them at this moment.

Everyone, even Yuko-san, seemed to be enjoying themselves as sake bottles began to form a ring around the table. Though the surrounding evidence of drunkenness looked irrational and foolish, Sakura decided that there was a certain amount of twisted charm in slowly destroying one's liver.

"So Kakashi," Thompson-sama drawled, "Are you sure you don't want Sakura to... Sakura-san to join us?" As Kakashi glanced at his 'wife', Sakura realized that he was not as intoxicated as she had expected. His shot glass was emptied in between the time Thompson-sama gave Sakura a capitalistic glimpse.

"She's still underage."

"Hm, so you're not willing to share your blossom? How selfish." Sakura's eyebrow twitched. The only thing she would like to share with this man was half her senbon collection. Preferably at a high speed.

Kakashi poured himself another cup of sake.

"I don't need money." Thompson-sama looked a bit shocked at the reply before laughing hysterically. His spine-chilling falsetto sent Sakura shifting her knees to slowly back away from the table.

"Since when was this about money? It's all about pleasure! Stay here, eat well, tour the estate and experience the spectrum of exotic women!" The blond man rattled the silverware on the small table as he thudded an elbow on the table, scanning the kunoichi with sleepy eyes. It wasn't as bad as Ono-sama, but Sakura was nevertheless annoyed at how Kakashi continued to put up with this behavior. Yuko-san had seemed to have left reality and was staring intently into space.

"Is that why you offered an extended stay here? So that you could add my wife into your personal prostitute collection?" The room fell silent. The cicadas began to buzz like Naruto on caffeine in the impending silence.

"Well, yes. In a very crass way of saying so." Kakashi rose to his feet and ambled toward the door. He stopped before the sliding door.

"Sakura."

"Huh?"

"Are you taking a shower tonight?"

"Well... yeah."

"Then me too." Sakura blushed furiously and ran after Kakashi who had opened the door and walked out. This was definitely not the reaction she was asking for from him, and _definitely_ not the kind of exit she had in mind.

Before running out to have a talk with her dignity-deficient husband, Sakura chanced a look behind her one more time. Thompson-sama had started on another bottle of sake and Yuko-san still had a faraway look in her eyes. But with a tear trailing down her pale face.

————————————————

"Kakashi-sensei!" she barked. Although everyone seemed to be too drunk to remember, Sakura was determined to give the man a good lecture. No one talked about their marraige life like that, whether it existed or not.

But Kakashi did not answer and went straight to their designated room. Sakura decided to try again.

"Kakashi-senpai?" His silence was unnerving. After she received no reply, the kunoichi followed the man mutely and watched the jounin closely as he entered the room.

There was no need for any more scrutinization since Kakashi began to sway and crumpled to his knees at the side of the bed.

He really did have too much to drink. After all, he downed at least three bottles of sake, Sakura reminisced distastefully.

"Ah... Since I'm not... as tense... alcohol's kicking in..." Squeezing his eyes shut, Kakashi attempted to calm the stormy room with his will. Sakura threw an arm around her ex-teacher's waist to steady him and gently pushed the copy ninja onto the mattress.

She had definitely never seen Kakashi like this before. In fact, it never occurred to her that her teacher would touch alcohol at all. After all, the three sins of a shinobi were sake, women and money. Or so said Sasuke. Wherever he learned that from.

Finishing her task in moving Kakashi onto the bed, Sakura turned to retreat when a hand seized her wrist and pulled her back. A shoulder rammed into her stomach, leaving her literally breathless.

"Sakura..." The kunoichi bit her lip in apprehension. This was an uncomfortable position. Here she stood with her thoroughly smashed leader with his face buried into her stomach. As she had once told herself: dire circumstances popped up like worms after the rain.

"You smell nice."

"You smell like alcohol," Sakura retorted as she attempted to push the man away by his shoulders. Her rejection only caused the man to hold her tighter and in result, made breathing a demanding task.

"Don't go." She stopped.

"Even if it's just for tonight... don't go." Originally, Sakura would have dismissed Kakashi as a drunken pervert. Yet tonight she remembered something Sasuke once told her when the team discussed about their—at that time—teacher.

_He said that all the people who were close to him were all dead._

_All of them?_

_Ah. I wouldn't be surprised if we were the first people who know him as much as we do since those people died_

_When did he tell you all that?_

_Um... when I said I'd kill everyone close to him...._

Sakura ceased panicking and relaxed slightly. Kakashi had been living in the perpetual state of desertion, and in his state of intoxication the paranoia of losing another precious person had risen to Kakashi's typically tranquil exterior. She once heard that forcefully breaking a person's grip in this state would be a source of night terrors for the inebriated or unconscious.

Or was it just the unconscious? Her mother was never the one to be clear with words.

Softly touching the man's arms to loosen his grip, the kunoichi slipped out of his grip to sit behind the man. Leaning against Kakashi's back, Sakura heaved a loud sigh. She vaguely felt her drunken counterpart's weight also shift against her backside.

Just for tonight, she decided as her world began to fade into drowsiness. Just for tonight, we'll share the bed.

————————————————

**Author's Notes:  
**I have to get those guys out of _that stupid mansion_ in order to write some legitimate action! But Kakashi just got wasted, so that's postponed.

At some point in time, I'll be merging chapters together. Probably when I'm finished with the fic.

The funny thing with this chapter was that I kept writing 'sake' as 'sakura'.

For every review submitted with the sole purpose of making an author update ("looking forward to the next chapter" is a bit different from "PLZ UPDATE!!"), a brain cell dies. I update once a week. I need all my brain cells. End of analogy.

"Fanartist"


	12. Book Club of Death

**Chapter XII**

Kakashi awoke with a throbbing head and heavy body. His throat was dry and even moving his eyelids required more will power than usual. The vague familiarity of the after-effects of alcohol brought back memories of his first and possibly last time he spent the night at a bar with Asuma and Ibiki back when he had no idea who dealt with torture and interrogation branch of the ANBU. That sadist managed to shove a whole bottle of vodka down his throat without lifting a finger, damn him.

Much to his relief, Kakashi found that he remembered everything up to the point when he entered the room, including the strange exchange of words he had with Thompson-sama. What troubled him was that his memories afterwards fizzled into nothingness, which gave way to a new concern.

Sakura.

She had been upset at him, but he supposed she was glad to leave the presence of a man who viewed her as his personal doll. Or did he mistake his own relief for hers? It was a bit strange, but he could recall some remnants of a possessive spirit during the haphazard chat.

Possessive... Was that it? Maybe not. The word was a bit too strong for his taste.

After this, fat chance he'd touch any kind of alcohol again. Why anyone enjoyed drowning himself in a collective ritual of liver poisoning was beyond his understanding. All the other jounins seemed to enjoy the strange procedures of alcohol worship in a social atmosphere. He, on the other hand, always rejected or left before an invitation was extended to him.

Assuming that thinking had somewhat cleared his mind, Kakashi decided to open his right eye and stare at the ceiling. Eyelids opened slowly to reveal the morning light muted by the rain clouds reflected dimly off the ceiling. Lined with streaks of pink.

Opening both eyes, Kakashi blinked in slight confusion before his attention was brought to the weight on his chest. There Sakura laid, her small figure curled up with her head on his chest and looking quite content.

The obi of her houmongi was untied and slack around her waist and the neckline had loosened enough for him to see her collarbones. Rose strands sprawled from the woman's head to his neck and several unruly strands had strayed into his line of vision. A hand clutched the dark cotton fabric of his kimono tighter as she sighed.

It was too early to be in shock and since he was too lazy to get up, Kakashi merely watched the kunoichi's head rise and fall in rhythm with his breathing. The clash of the familiar in an unfamiliar setting was a source of amusement for the man. Here he was, lying in bed with an intense hangover, watching his former student sleeping on his chest. Mulling over his current setting once again, a nervous tension twisted his gut.

He prayed that nothing happened last night. At least nothing he had seen or read in any lewd form of mass media.

Though he would gladly cut off all ties with time and space to be in this moment, Kakashi knew that leaving immediately would be favorable. After this headache subsided, that was. With any luck, Sakura might have brought some remedy for a hangover. He had forgotten how troublesome these were.

The clicking of a turning doorknob cut through Kakashi's foggy senses. Quickly assuming a slumbering posture, he listened intently to the approaching footsteps to identify the one who had so rudely interrupted his morning activities.

He felt a hand stretching out, hovering hesitantly over him. Slipping a kunai into his grasp, he waited for the hand to fall. As soon the hand touched Sakura, the jounin retaliated immediately. In one movement, the man yanked on the inferior limb and imprisoned the perpetrator between the edge of the mattress and his kunai. Only then did he open a hostile eye to inspect his catch.

His eye grew wide in surprise.

"You..."

Sakura stirred and turned a sleepy head to the commotion. Rubbing her eyes in effort to clear her cloudy vision, she stared at the unfortunate creature at the Copy Ninja's mercy for several seconds before quickly sitting up on the mattress in recognition.

"Yuko-san!"

————————————————

Shiro toured the library of the mansion, eyes scanning the shelves for nothing in particular. The blond ninja named Naruto promised an unspeakable punishment if he was to flee their proximity, but in truth, he had nowhere to go. He, despite his build and physical attributes, was born in a land twenty yards away from the edge of Kakashi's scroll map.

He had lived in this country only for his first four years of his life and thus remembered very little of anything. As soon as he arrived from port, he had walked the streets in attempt to see the one street he lived on only to find everything familiar.

"Oi, Shiro." A calm voice cut through the gunman's musings. The most ninja-like ninja he identified as Sasuke stood several meters away from him also inspecting the books.

"Do you know how to read this?" Sasuke held up a thick hardcover book titled _Moby Dick_. Shiro scrunched his face.

"Ew."

"Mature."

"No one under fifty has the patience to read a book of psychotic captain that has trouble confessing his feelings of true 'wub' to a whale." The young man retuned to his browsing and stuffed his gloved hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat. Sasuke gave the book in his hand a distasteful look before re-shelving the blasphemous book. At least he knew that the man was bilingual. Another reason to tolerate his immaturity.

"Man, there's only boring books here." Shiro despaired at his limited choice of literature and thwarted his attention to subjects that contained more color.

This mansion was boring. The mansion's owner was boring. The mansion's books were boring. And even the paintings were boring. Other than the fact that the eyes moved to stare... straight down... at...him...

In immediate reaction, Shiro swiftly pulled out a spare handgun and shot the forehead of a stiffly dancing lady on the canvas. Blood dribbled out of the hole from the happy maiden's forehead, signifying that someone had been eavesdropping on the two's conversation.

Sasuke cuffed the over-reactive gunman soundly over the head.

"You idiot, I was going to feed that guy false information!"

"But it was too creepy!" Shiro whined as he held one arm protectively over his bruise and pointed his gun toward the blissfully bleeding goddess once again. The man shriveled in Sasuke's withering glare and continued to rub his head sore.

I doubt Mr. Thompson would mind if disposed of a rat in his mansion, Sasuke hoped with little faith as he attached his feet to the wall next to the frame with chakra and sliced the edges of the oil painting. The least he could do was preserve what was left of the blood stained art.

After he finished cutting out the sides and top of the canvas, Sasuke slowly lowered the cloth so that the perpetrator would slide noiselessly to the floor. A quick take at the tiny hallway behind the painting and he was back next to Shiro's victim.

The familiar physique of the carcass struck a nervous chord in the Uchiha. Eyebrows knit together and mouth set in a grim line, he rolled the corpse with his feet to identify the dead.

It was then Naruto entered the crime scene.

————————————————

"A-are you sure?" After finding a stunned and tearful Yuko-san at the mercy of her husband's kunai, Sakura had immediately reprimanded her superior while pulling her kimono together into a respectable bunch. Mornings seemed to be so much more of a hassle with Kakashi around.

"So... your husband wants me dead because he wants my wife." Kakashi tasted the words in his mouth. They had a wonderfully smug flavor to them.

Yuko nodded. The three sat on the floor; Sakura and Kakashi cross-legged, while Yuko-san kneeled in that unbreakable aura of poise she emitted.

To Sakura, the reason was absurd and disturbed her to a reasonable degree.

"But... why?" She was confused and desperately did not want to accept the fact that the man had the gall to even consider adding a kunoichi to his collection. Exotic taste, yes. Expressing wishes for a long and pain-free life, no.

Kakashi rose and remained calm as blood rushed to his head and began their quest in what seemed to be mining for diamonds in his brain. He paced about the room in attempt to ease the distant clanging he felt in his head. Something needed to be done about this hangover.

"Thompson-sama had agreed with another man to keep Kakashi-san at this house until he was killed. The other man I do not know, but he seems extremely familiar with my husband. Both talked over the phone before Kakashi-san came to drop off some luggage."

"Does the man have any suspicions against you?" The last thing Kakashi wanted was unnecessary collateral damage.

"He thinks all the women of the world are smitten by him." Never mind.

"Why did you go through all this trouble to—?"

"I hate him." The words came out so easily that Sakura contemplated seriously on the success rate this woman could have as a kunoichi. Her intelligence gathering skills were above average for someone who had never received ninja training, and yet on the other hand, her teamwork sucked.

"Mr. Thompson is supposed to die tonight." In a rare show of emotion, the petite woman gripped the cloth of her kimono tightly. "When he dies, that ridiculous contract with my family's business will be invalid since he has no children to inherit his authority and I will be able to live as a person. A _real_ person."

She squeezed her eyes shut to moderate the amount of stress in her voice. Quickly recovering her composure, Yuko smiled apologetically before moving on.

"It is best if you have a head start. Even if the facts do not fall into place, the blame will still be set on your team. It is the least I can give you after you have given me a chance to escape this life."

Though Sakura saw that protecting Thompson-sama would be easier, letting the course of events happen without interruption would be a good way to determine the Hidden Cloud's current political position. Closing the borders without warning was one major oddity. Immediately blaming the team for a planned death was another.

Yet not only did they have to deal with supposed Bloodline Limit hunters, Raikage's possibly non-existent secret agenda was also causing problems by merely keeping Team Seven in the Lightning Country. Kakashi stared intently at the sun began to illuminate the clouds. Multi-tasking was a bothersome concept, and to find their cover blown with no way out proved to be a chaotic catalyst.

"I had made it clear to Thompson-sama that we would be leaving as soon as we could," he stated calmly, making the blood cells mining in his brain vibrate and explode. He really needed to take care of this hangover. "Yuko-san, thank you for your information. I hope we will be able to repay you someday."

As Yuko stood, so did Sakura. Kakashi returned to Sakura's side.

"Here." The woman reached in her sleeve and handed a small book to the kunoichi, which the latter received after glancing at her husband. Flipping the front cover open, there was an address scrawled crudely in the corner.

"If you ever need a safe place to stay, go there and say that 'hime-chan' sent you." Sakura closed the book gingerly and bowed. She was selfish, but Yuko-san was a charitable in her own twisted way.

"Thank you."

————————————————

On seeing the corpse, Naruto went around the bend leaving Common Sense and Sanity in his wake and Sasuke on high alert. Before the distraught Uzumaki could rant in a deliriously rabid manner, the Uchiha quickly called for his attention.

"Naruto! You go report to Kakashi and start packing. Shiro and I will clean this place up." Forming several seals, Sasuke embedded his chakra into the entire library, shielding the area so no one incapable of ninjutsu could enter.

"My genjutsu will only keep up for thirty minutes max. Move!" Naruto disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Sasuke bit his lip at the projected complexity of this problem. Damn. Never thought that this kind of Absolute Worst Situation could happen.

————————————————

"Kakashi-sensei! Sakura-chan!" The kitsune barged into the couple's bedroom, still in hysterics. Kakashi stood in the middle of the room adjusting his gloves.

"Hm?"

"Where's Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked looking around wildly.

"She's getting changed. Why?"

"Thompson-sama's dead!" The man stopped in the middle of his preparations.

"Shiro killed him on accident." Well that certainly made things less complicated and yet more so. Kakashi made a mental note to ask Sakura if she could paralyze certain areas of the brain. Do something about the Shiro-kid's attention span.

"What's the situation?"

"Sasuke just used genjutsu in the library which would give us thirty minutes at most. He and Shiro are cleaning up and most of our belongings are still packed so we can move out in five minutes."

Kakashi crossed his arms in contemplation. Sakura emerged from the bathroom dressed in an over-sized T-shirt while rubbing a towel on her head. Seeing another teammate in the room, the kunoichi stopped to look about.

"What's going on?"

"Five minutes." Kakashi walked to the coffee table and tossed Sakura her pack. "Be at the gazebo." The man disappeared in a blur leaving Sakura confused and speechless. Few seconds later, she noticed that Naruto had not exited the room and was watching her with suspiciously curious eyes.

"What?"

"Ne... Sakura-chan," Naruto started slowly, cupping a hand over one side of his mouth to ensure 'privacy'.

"So what happened last night?" Sakura blinked. The quick succession of seemingly extraterrestrial topics rendered the kunoichi bank-faced and befuddled. There was no doubt men were from a different planet. Or it could be her innate ability to draw out the peculiarities of masculine intelligence.

"Huh?"

"Did you guys...y'know..." The jounin made some motions with his hands, which completely eluded his naïve spectator.

"...'Go at it'?"

Later that day the maid chanced upon three molars scattered on the rug while she dusted the room.

————————————————

The rain was not heavy, but thunder in the distance foreshadowed a downpour.

Kakashi was late as always.

The three ninjas and one gunman had finished exchanging all their information and now sat in a somber silence. Shiro looked guilty. Sasuke looked pensive. Sakura looked nervous. Naruto looked... swollen. In the face.

"Yo." Kakashi materialized from above. Everyone shouldered their packs to leave in response. His tardiness was still irritating, but at least he had the sense to shorten the delay to less than five minutes.

No one said anything as they took off into the grove of trees outside the mansion gate.

As they took off, Kakashi decided to share a bit of news.

"I didn't tell you everything that was in the mission scroll before we left."

"Ah," Sasuke replied monotonously while Sakura recalled Kakashi's stern expression when he burned the scroll Tsunade lent to the leader. So far, every bit of bad news had the word "possibly" or "probably" attached. This one, she guessed as her stomach sank, would not.

"From now on, we're on our own."

Stopping on a branch, Kakashi turned around to face the rest of Team Seven. Everyone slammed their feet into a branch to accommodate the sudden halt.

_On our own_. Naruto quirked an eyebrow. Hadn't they been on their own since the borders closed?

Kakashi gripped his hitae-ate and threw it in a muddy puddle where it disturbed the dirt and disappeared beneath the sludge. Naruto looked dumbstruck as did everyone else besides Shiro who was oblivious as expected.

"From now on, we are missing-nins of Konoha."

————————————————

**Author's Notes:**  
Some interesting quotes from reviews of the last chapter:

"I've also done sake/sasuke on occasion" – _Shiroi Hikari_  
""Love me! Love me!"" – _(N/A) _(Note: Quotation taken out of context)  
"Just let the poor man have is sakura, err sake." – _Nereidaia_  
"OMGPLZUPDATESOONx10!" – _Digital_ _Siren _(I've received a few of these...)_  
_"Wasted Kakashi kawaii Kakashi." – _deity of death1_

As for the difference between "looking forward to you next chapter" to "PLZUPDATE!!!1!1!" is that the first statement clearly shows that they have read my previous author's notes stating time and again that I will update every week. The latter shows lack of reading comprehension and coherent typing skills.

I think the quality of my chapters are declining. Or is it because I'm usually writing from 1-3 AM?

"Fanartist"


	13. Fish and Vodka

**Chapter XIII: Fish and Vodka**

"_Missing-nins?!_" Naruto screeched. "B-but why?!" He had so many things to do before he became a missing-nin or a dead-nin. Becoming Hokage was at the top of the list, and this tidbit of would not look good on his resume.

"Explanations later. Now get rid of your hitae-ate. Since we're the only Leaf ninjas in the country, there's no use in carrying them around."

"But Iruka-sensei..."

"Naruto! Just throw it away!" Sakura cried out in exasperation as she stomped on a plot of dirt where her forehead protector was buried. Glancing at her superior, she wondered what brought Kakashi to this unusual assumption. The glance became a double-take when she saw the copy-nin looking intently back at her.

"What?"

The man scratched his head sheepishly. "Um, I was wondering if you had anything for hangovers."

Sakura gave her leader a disapproving look before handing him a bottle.

"What's this?" He asked as he twisted off the top and sniffed the contents inside. The liquid inside smelled of nothing and he looked back at the medic in slight confusion.

"Water."

"You don't have anything else?"

"Would I lie to you?"

"Perhaps."

Sakura opened her mouth to argue only to stop herself. It was true. Even if she remembered to bring an antidote for a hangover, Kakashi would not deserve such luxury.

"Either way," Sakura said smugly, "That's all you get." Turning around, she jumped onto a branch and continued towards Yuko-san's former home. Kakashi sighed and looked forlornly at the bottle in his hand.

Women were such complicated creatures.

————————————————

Kakashi ordered that all clothing that revealed any kind of symbol was to be discarded for dark, non-descript attire. Flak jackets were discarded and incinerated. All Konoha jounin and chuunin fatigues were effectively destroyed save Naruto's precious headband. No amount of reasoning or threatening could counter "But Iruka-sensei gave it to me!" and so the stubborn demon child was left with his precious article. Sakura despaired at the childish way Naruto chose to express his demands.

The team had split in order to accommodate their own acquired tastes as Shiro so illustriously enlightened to his newfound friends. His plan backfired when Naruto and Sasuke assented and assumed their roles as captors, dragging the culturally narrow-minded Shiro for 'fish so fresh, it'll stare at you'. Sakura decided to eat alone, a sentiment not shared by her superior as she watched Shiro's tearful and desperate goodbye.

"Well? What are we eating today?" The remaining jounin looked irritably cheerful at the thought of dining with his favorite—and only—kunoichi. Sakura's face immediately lost all youthful vitality at his proposition as she glared at the eye not obscured by the black strip of cloth that replaced his headband.

"'We'?"

"What's wrong with 'we'?"

"There is no 'we' when 'I' still happens to be mad at 'You'." Sakura turned to leave. Raising an eyebrow, Kakashi turned the opposite way. If that was how she would take his offer, then he would have to bare everything.

"What a shame. I wanted to talk to someone on why we're missing-nins...." He heard her stop. The insatiable thirst for knowledge and will for reason reached into the depth of her parched intellect.

Now that he had Sakura's full and undivided attention as well as hesitation, all she needed was a little tug at the preconceived leash to change the girl's obvious direction.

"Maybe I'll join the boys instead... talk politics with Sasuke or something..." Though Kakashi would not have left Sakura to eat alone, two could play this intellectual game of chicken.

There was a tugging at his sleeve. Kakashi turned to Sakura in feigned shock. As expected, the exclusive factor led to her downfall. He smiled at the inevitable. She was cute when she was predictable.

"If you start gloating, I'll kill you."

"Hai, hai."

————————————————

They sat inside a small bustling restaurant, one that Sakura had less than favorable opinions on its bland appearance. Appearances were deceiving, however. Whoever owned the place was a genius at making yakisoba.

"You remember Neji from the Chuunin Exam, Sakura," Kakashi began as he snapped apart his chopsticks.

"Hyuuga Neji?" Sakura mused, glancing at the waiter refilling her glass. "He fought with Naruto in the first round of the Chuunin Exam. Why?"

"Yup. He also exposed a good deal of confidential information during his 'Caged Bird' speech that day." Kakashi propped his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together. Sakura noted that his gloves were gone as was everything on his dish.

"After the Cloud found out that the body given to them was Hyuuga Hizashi, the country began to move in their spies and cut off all political and economic ties with the Leafs. This also factored into our village's decline in power, but even now we don't have the time or resources to do anything about it.

"Right now, the Cloud is itching for a chance to blame something on the Leafs. The problem is that most prominent people would rather hire ninjas of their own country rather than another, so there are no official records of any ninjas entering the country unless they are assigned a mission. Godaime-sama knew that she was putting us in a precarious position when she assigned us this mission, and if some high-top person ended up dead, we would have to be declared missing-nins in order to avoid conflict."

Pushing her face closer to her leader, Sakura narrowed her eyes.

"Why didn't you tell us this earlier?"

"I forgot," was his swift reply. The validity of the answer was doubtful, but Sakura only gave Kakashi a harsh glance that conveyed her disbelief.

"I wanted to tell Naruto and Sasuke, but being missing-nins really doesn't have much to do with our mission so I'll tell them later."

Sakura nodded. Quickly finishing the remaining scraps on her plate, she took a big gulp from her glass to wash down anything left in her mouth but suddenly began to sputter and cough violently.

"Sakura?" Kakashi inquired with a bit a concern. Sakura wiped her mouth and cringed.

"No, nothing. It's just that the water here tastes gross." And I just drank half the cup, she thought disgustedly. Kakashi gave her an odd look and took the cup from her grasp and sniffed the liquid inside. The scent was a bit different, but he could identify the abominable substance

Some idiot had refilled Sakura's cup top full of alcohol.

And not just any alcohol. Something stronger than the sake he had at Thompson's place. Judging from the intensity of the stench, what Sakura had downed in that one gulp was an equivalent to half a bottle of sake. Kakashi wondered what he should say to Naruto and Sasuke about this situation. The designated meeting time was less than ten minutes away and Sakura sobering up between now and then was like asking a twelve-year-old Naruto to eat his vegetables.

As Kakashi wondered how such a colossal mistake could happen, a waitress bustled toward their table and excused herself before taking the liberty to sniff Sakura's beverage. On taking a whiff of the illicit substance, she bit her lip and fidgeted before reciting an obviously pre-conceived apology.

"I'm sorry. One of out part-time workers thought it was funny to replace a pitcher of water with vodka. In compensation, we would like to pay for your lunch." Kakashi nodded dumbly in concurrence and in realization that Sakura had just consumed alcohol before she was legally permitted to. This mission report would have more holes than he anticipated...

"Sensei? Do all restaurants spin in the Lightning Country?" Great. The alcohol was seeping into her system already.

"Ones that sell alcohol to minors, yes."

Sakura's eyes brightened in understanding. "Ohh..."

Rising from his seat, Kakashi offered a hand. "Sakura, let's go." Green eyes stared sleepily back in response rather than budging from her seat. Sakura's previous drink was invading the corner of her brain that possessed rational thinking patterns, and that corner was swiftly warping into the fourth dimension.

"Y' know what?" Sakura said suddenly, slowly lifting an arm above her head and dramatically pointed a finger at the jounin's nose.

Kakashi waited for a continuation, his hand still extended towards her general direction. After the tense moment Sakura hiccupped and dropped her arm.

"I forgot." Kakashi sighed and gripped Sakura's wrist, pulling her reluctantly to her feet. She swayed and fell onto his shoulder, attracting some unwanted attention. Ignoring the growing numbers of eyes turning to their general direction, Kakashi hoisted an arm around his neck and quickly made his exit. Of all times to get drunk, it had to be the middle of the day.

The rain had increased ever so slightly, but a rumble in the distance indicated an oncoming downpour.

Which happened three seconds later.

While the concept of bad luck never occurred to Kakashi despite the bizarre turn of events, pneumonia did. Trying to find the rest of the team in the rain was ruled out, and obtaining a room was best in this circumstance.

Setting Sakura's pack on a foot, Kakashi swung the pink-headed chuunin off the ground, right arm supporting her knees and the left, her back. He kicked the pack into the air and caught it with one hand and moved the luggage onto Sakura's stomach where she hugged the pack for warmth.

"Ah, I remember what I was going to say," Sakura mumbled, rubbing her cheek on his shirt. Finding the comfortable plane below the right collarbone, her eyes closed in alcohol-induced drowsiness.

"I wouldn't mind marrying you."

————————————————

The three men sat side-by-side in a cart much like Ichiraku, Shiro seated between the two ninjas. The literally fishy smell that hit him ten meters down the street already deterred his appetite.

"Alright! Eat up!" Naruto eagerly dug his chopsticks into his dish while Shiro stared at his less-than-satisfactory meal before him. Sasuke noticed the gunman's discomfort and poked him with the blunt end of his chopsticks.

"What's wrong?"

"Its eyes... and tail.... They're still moving..."

"Ah ha, that means it's fresh! Mine's doing the same thing, so don't worry about it." Despite Naruto's consolation, Shiro could not bring any kind of eating utensil near the plate. It seemed like...animal cruelty....

"I don't want to eat something that can stare at me." Clunk! Shiro and Naruto jumped at the sound of a kunai hitting the wooden board. An exasperated Sasuke had decapitated the flailing entrée.

"You _killed_ it!" Shiro cried. Sasuke whacked the gunman over the head.

"Shut up you idiot! We would have forced you to eat it anyways!" For a mercenary who supposedly had his fair share of homicides, he was acting awfully childish. He was like... Naruto. Two idiots.

"We're not going to have another break until nightfall, so if you don't eat now you'll only slow us down." He looked away and continued to eat in silence.

"Ow..." Naruto watched Shiro rub his head to ease the pain. A thought had entered the blond's mind as he watched the whole exchange.

"Oi, Shiro... Are you really a mercenary?"

"I'm a... hmm, what would you call it... Where I come from, they call people like me 'snipers'. Basically a long-range assassin." Picking up the chopsticks he dropped, Shiro peeled a small piece of meat off the slimy skin and narrowed his eyes and the gelatinous morsel. He mimicked Naruto by dipping the meat into the small bowl of sauce beside his plate.

"I'm not very good when I'm in the heart of the action. Picking off unsuspecting enemies is my specialty."

"Then why—"

"—was I at the party like that?" Shiro swallowed his bit of food. It wasn't that bad. A bit rubbery, but not bad.

"I was the only bilingual person of the whole team."

Naruto nodded sagely.

"Sucks to be you."

————————————————

Kakashi stood watching over Sakura mumbling nonsense in a drunken slumber. His message, sent via nin-dog, would meet the trio at the meeting point and hopefully they would find their way to the inn. For now he would make his way toward the meeting place after establishing a temporary guard for Sakura.

He had an inebriated subordinate accepting a non-existent marriage proposal who was holding up their travel schedule. The wonders of human invention.

Nevertheless, alcohol was truly the poison of society. Nothing else would make the violent yet naive Sakura so cheerful and open than a gulp of vodka. The scenario left him wondering what kind of nonsense he spewed out last night.

_I wouldn't mind marrying you._

Kakashi chuckled to himself. Sakura was funny when she was drunk.

————————————————

Naruto was the first to notice the caped dog that wore sunglasses in the rain. As Naruto ran toward the messenger, Sasuke went into deep thought. If Kakashi sent a messenger to the meeting place before the designated time, something was up. Most likely a change in plans.

"Oi, Sasuke, look at this," Naruto said as he tossed the scroll previously in possession between the jaws of Kakashi's pet. The three kneeled next to Naruto, who was in the process of spoiling the dog, and peered at the erratically written characters on the sheet. Apparently the man was distracted when he wrote this.

As Naruto was scratching Kakashi's pet, the dog's ears shot up. Naruto also looked about, noticing the lack of people and their disadvantageous position in middle of an empty plaza. Sasuke burned the scroll in his hand and looked at Shiro.

"So you're not a hand-to-hand fighter?" Shiro nodded with a quizzical look on his face. Sasuke sighed. He could only trust his gut instinct on this decision. Swinging about his pack, Sasuke unlatched a long black box he had confiscated when the gunman was knocked unconscious. Shiro stared at Sasuke's outstretched hand that held the strap of the black box.

"I suppose I can put my trust in you?" Shiro's face became uncharacteristically grave as his eyes met the Uchiha's. Taking the strap from the shinobi's hands and shouldering the case so that it was positioned parallel to his body, the sniper turned and walked wordlessly away from the two men and the dog. Sasuke watched the gunman walk into the mist and as the figure disappeared, he shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

"I think I did something stupid."

"Naw, he's a good guy. We'll be all right." Naruto threw a shuriken at a pool of water nearby. A hand shot up, catching the shrapnel between its fingers followed by a heavily armored and bandaged ninja. As he slid out of the puddle, a multitude of shinobis also materialized from random collections of water around the plaza.

There were about thirty in all.

"No identifying village. Could mean that a Kage's behind this." Sasuke's eyes swirled red as he reached into his pack and twirled about his Fuuma shuriken.

"Either way," Naruto said with an ominous grin, "Looks like the buffet decided to open."

————————————————

**Author's Notes: **  
I do not write lemon. I am not sorry that I don't write lemons, so do not ask for any.

Shiro's encounter with the fish is actually based on my brother's experiences. Except he didn't eat the fish.

Smashed Kakashi, smashed Sakura. Two of a kind.

As for the two's first kiss... don't expect anything melodramatic. I suck at angst and mush. Anti-climatic events are my specialty.

I'm slowly editing past chapters while I write for future readers based on reviews and personal aspirations. If there's new content in a previous chapter, I'll tell you all about it in these ANs.

"Fanartist"


	14. Spider's Web

**Chapter XIV: Spider's Web**

A spark at the enemy's fingertips began the melee. As the undefined ninjas slammed his charged hand into the wet brick surface of the plaza, Naruto and Sasuke jumped high into the air. It took less than a second to realize that landing in a thousand-volt field was not to the two's advantage.

"Sasuke!"

"I know!" Sasuke took a deep breath and heaved out a column of fire, creating a thick white mist that engulfed the area with a thick fog before clearing the air once more. A soft tinkling from behind caught Naruto's attention before he turned to see a rain of needles falling from the sky at a high velocity.

"Gwah!" Both landed several meters away from the flaming brick plot, studded with steel spines and landing heavily on their sides. All that and only seven shinobi were either out of commission or dead.

"Hmph. That was way too easy. I thought Leaf ninjas were tougher than that," the opposing ninja mocked as a number of unraveled scrolls clattered to the ground around him. Utterly pathetic, the man thought with a mixture of pride and disgust.

"Heh…" Naruto pushed himself upright with labored effort, his mouth twisted into a bloody smirk. The sadistic spectator watched with much amusement at the futile attempt at resiliance.

"You think…we're that easy?"

"?!" A poof of smoke remained as the shadow clones disappeared, triggering a countless number of shuriken that shot across the plaza from all sides and taking out a dozen oblivious shinobi. An immense amount of charka collected in the air thwarted the remaining ninja's attention to the space above. The vision they saw was nothing short of baffling.

The two leaf shinobi were sprinting five feet over their heads.

The armored man squinted to make out clear, thin threads intersecting under his foe's feet, connected to a variety of large shuriken deeply embedded into the buildings surrounding the plaza. So that's how it was…

"So you used the steam from the water evaporating after that fire attack to stall for time in order to create another 'platform' off the ground." Sasuke calmly pierced the man's throat as he appeared behind the verbose foe with a kunai as he hung by his toes.

"You talk too much."

————————————————

Sakura awoke to find herself in an unfamiliar room wearing unfamiliar clothes and in an unfamiliar state.

Reason trickled slowly into her throbbing mind. The team had changed their attire when they stopped by a town and broke into two groups for lunch. Assuming that she had eaten lunch with Kakashi and that the man was there long enough to see her get drunk, the only logical order of events was that he had taken her somewhere after her mind went wonky on alcohol.

Remembering Kakashi's drunken antics and piecing them together with what she had seen on television, Sakura jolted her back off the floor, which was followed by a painful rush of blood to her head, and desperately racked her demurring brain for any little snippets of memory from after she exited the restaurant to when she was brought to this… place.

Where exactly was 'this place'? Taking a hold of her senses, the kunoichi noted the presence of a floppy-eared dog lying next to her blankets. Obviously one of Kakashi's since there was no other person in the world that would adorn their pets with that strange scarecrow-face drawing. It was tacky, but when she explained it to Tenten-sempai in one of their coincidental marketplace meetings, she said it was cute. She was not the only one who thought that way, for Hinata shared the same sentiments. Since then, Sakura had many internal debates on the relative concept of 'cute'.

Lying back down so her head hit dead center of the pillow, she directed her thoughts to something other than her headache. Kakashi must have left to find Naruto and Sasuke-kun, she thought. Sakura sighed and began to mentally dig through layers upon layers of what she figured to be brain cells corrupted by the wiles of vodka. Little by little the scenes came back to her in erratic intervals.

There was the waitress, babbling to Kakashi after taking a whiff of the contents in her cup. Then they were standing in the rain… but before that she had something to say. A vague memory of focusing her attention on her leader's eye, and then her mind shut down until she found herself outside in the rain. Looking up at Kakashi. In his arms.

And she said something… something important…or something she thought was important at the time.

Whatever she said, she _had_ to remember. Though she would ask Kakashi, there was a vague internal alarm warning her that her dignity would not emerge unscathed.

"Uwah!" Sakura cried out lout as she gripped her hair in desperation. The dog next to her stirred and lifted his head in quiet interest.

"What _did_ I say?"

————————————————

Shiro peered through the sight, surveying the field. The ninjas were moving at high speeds, but after watching them flounder below Naruto and Sasuke attacking above their precious million-volt turf, the remaining five shinobi were forced to tread the flimsy wire platform.

The ninjas who wiped out his comrades the day he began that aborted assignment would trust his hostage to kill their enemies. Who in their right mind would put give their detainee such an advantageous position? He could go home earlier and take less vexing assignments back in his own country…if he killed them…

_I suppose I can put my trust in you?_

Sasuke's words echoed in the gunman's mind until Shiro squeezed his eyes shut to focus his mind. After his concentration stabilized, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes slowly and took aim.

————————————————

Naruto and Sasuke stood back to back, fatigue threatening the Uchiha's attention. When they were off-guard, these ninjas were easy targets. When they weren't, they made suitable opponents. A bit too suitable.

Now that both ally and enemy were fighting on a thin wire platform, Sasuke could feel the weight of seven people, dead and alive, straining the shuriken holding up the field. If all of them kept moving, this safety net would collapse to leave him and Naruto to fight with a devastating handicap.

"Naruto! Whatever you do, don't kage bunshin too much!"

"I already know that!" Naruto whipped out three explosion tags. Sasuke followed suit, attaching a tag to each of the kunai he carried in his hand.

"For the future Hokage, this should be nothing!"

Using the wire net as a trampoline, Sasuke catapulted into the air, separating two of the last five shinobi. Two against Sasuke, three against Naruto. The latter's stamina would be able to take more hits than he could say for himself.

Sasuke threw his kunai in rapid succession, forcing the opposing ninja back with each one. He would expose his side as he rushed to deliver what would look like the finishing strike to lure the other shinobi over the kunai

"Guh!" A foot found its way to Sasuke's gut as it kicked him away, as planned. As he fell, a spark from the explosion tags attached to his previous kunai caught his attention. The electricity going through the plaza below disrupted the trigger and cancelled out the effects of the explosion tag, leaving the chakra-embedded pieces of paper smoking uselessly beneath his enemy.

Sharingan eyes widened the fatal inaccuracy. The trap was useless. He would fall unguarded and dangerously exposed.

Immediately on landing, the opposing shinobi wrapped an armor-clad hand around several wires he yanked, pulling out a loosened shuriken and causing a violent quaking under Sasuke's feet. The thread gave away, and Sasuke immediately gripped any wire available and hung painfully by his fingertips. This was a severe miscalculation on his behalf, and if Naruto couldn't send at least one shadow clone in his direction, his demise would be from above or below.

"Naruto!" Sasuke shouted as he felt cleats dig into his already aching fingers. He gritted his teeth as blood trailed down into his shirt. What kind of self-respecting ninjas needed cleats when they had chakra?

"I underestimated you, but this is the e—" A sickening crack of an object ramming through the ninja's metal headgear and skull cut through the sounds of the rain and Naruto battling the remaining three shinobi. Sasuke and his remaining opponent looked about in confusion before another crack sent the other man hanging lifelessly on the suspended webbing.

_Where I come from, they call people like me 'snipers'. Basically a long-range assassin._

Sasuke smirked and hoisted and steadied himself back on his 'platform'. Trusting Shiro didn't turn out as bad has he thought.

Before rushing off to help Naruto, Sasuke glanced back at the dead shinobi.

They really did talk too much.

————————————————

Alright, two down, three more to go. Shiro shifted his position to face Naruto's battle where he took out a hesitating ninja before Sasuke joined in the brawl. Now that the battle was one-on-one, the target would be moving faster and he needed to keep in mind the positions of his allies.

"Yo." A voice made him start and he turned to see two ninjas.

One was Kakashi. The other he didn't know and decided that he should be relieved to see Kakashi strangling him calmly.

"Yo, where's Sakura?"

"Sakura?" Kakashi wondered how Shiro would react to news of Sakura suffering from the side-effects of illegal alcohol consumption. He would more than likely pass the information to Sasuke and Naruto, and Kakashi had an idea of how the two would take the truth.

"She wasn't feeling well." The less information, the better.

"Hmm…" Shiro looked deep in thought. His fingers moved in odd figurations as he pieced facts together as he glared at his gun in contemplation, Sasuke and Naruto forgotten in his new puzzle. A few seconds later Shiro's face brightened as he thumped a fist into his hand.

"I know what's wrong with Sakura!"

"Hm?" Kakashi wondered how this man who had little knowledge of their culture and had only known his team for three days could figure out the emotional patterns of Sakura. The only woman on the team. The natural enigma as far as men was concerned. The female.

Assuming some ridiculous explanation, Kakashi decided to humor the gunman and released the shinobi that had stopped struggling in his arms a while ago and squatted next to Shiro.

"Then let's hear it."

————————————————

Sakura opened her water bottle to find it empty. Irritably tossing the useless vessel aside, she squeezed her temples with the palm of both hands.

The pounding in her brain had lessened somewhat. Just one gulp caused her all this. Sakura realized that though she looked like her mother, she had her father's disgraceful lack of tolerance. She was surprised that he had survived any kind of social drinking events, since just one sip would cause enough intoxication for him to lose all coherencies.

Absentmindedly reaching over to scratch the ears of the fuzzy creature next to her, Sakura continued to stare and take in the fine cracks in the ceiling and contemplating on what she wanted, other than getting rid of this headache.

Despite her adamant protests against marriage, Sakura still longed for some kind of companionship other than books and scrolls. Ironically, she had wanted to meet new people on her first time on the field as a medic-nin but was stuck into her old gennin team. Unlike the old Team Seven, she could start over, create and imprint new impressions.

But no, she was stuck with the people that knew her like their old battle scars. And now she was 'married' to the man that identified her as well as his favorite books. She wouldn't be surprised if he could read her as easily as those raunchy scenes.

Sakura made a face at the analogy and turned her mind elsewhere. What was something else she wanted?

She wanted…

Ice cream.

————————————————

Sasuke lied down on the bed of wires, finally letting himself clutch the bruised flesh of the bullet wound he received during his stay at the mansion. Naruto sat next to him looking as cheerful as ever, mocking his friend's low energy.

"Nya ha ha! I saw that!"

"Saw what?" Sasuke sighed out.

"So much for the Great Uchiha Clan, eh? If Shiro didn't pick those guys off, you'd be dead." Naruto watched Shiro kneel and recite a prayer over a corpse, crossing himself as he rose before continuing his walk towards them. Watching the strange ritual dedication of homage to the deceased, Naruto decided to reiterate what his instincts told him before the battle. "I told you he was a good guy."

"Hey," Shiro greeted, jogging towards the two from under the net.

"Don't 'hey' us, what happened to the last person?" Sasuke demanded on his back.

"Ah, Kakashi got rid of him."

"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto looked around to detect another presence. Shiro waved a hand.

"He went to check up on Sakura. She wasn't feeling well, so that's probably why we decided to stop at this village."

"Ah ha…" Naruto nodded before a devilish grin raided his face.

"Why? What's so funny?" Sasuke grew irritated as his friend began to snicker.

"Y'wanna walk in on them?" From where Shiro stood, Sasuke just seemed abnormally tacit. From where Naruto stood, Sasuke's face was changing color at a frighteningly rapid pace.

"That's not a good idea."

Sasuke craned his neck to look down at Shiro. "How so?"

"It's… well, I-It's not what you guys think but…well, it's something…important for them and… um…." Shiro stuttered with his words, earning him two odd looks. An uncomfortable silence settled on the gunman's shoulders before he wrapped up his haphazard speech.

"Uh… just ask them yourself." Naruto looked at Sasuke and Sasuke looked back at Naruto. Naruto shrugged in confusion, not comprehending anything beyond their current situation. Sasuke had a well-worn proclamation ready in these kinds of situations. First one to articulate the line would be free of such daunting responsibilities where information gathering would become emotionally stormy; responsibilities that should be given to none other than his best friend.

"You ask."

————————————————

**Author's Notes:**

Minor-ish edit in Chapter 10, Naruto's Cyclops quote. I changed it before I uploaded it that time, but I decided to go back to the original quote. The level of indecency is upped a bit ("a bit" might be an understatement, but just look and see). **Note:** The original quote said nothing about Kakashi's sex life, just his marital/love life.

College is eating me alive. Don't expect weekly updates.

"Fanartist"


	15. Hypocrisy

**Chapter XV: Hypocrisy **

"Another plate please!"

"Coming right up!"

"Naruto! Stop freeloading! It's bad enough that we're endangering these people's lives," Sakura scolded.

"But we haven't eaten since the last village!" cried the fair-haired ninja as he rebelled by popping a piece of pork smothered with salty bean paste into his mouth.

"Sasuke-kun, can you—" Sakura had turned to who she hoped to be the most influential character in this situation only to see him stuffing a slice of tomato into a mouth already full of beef.

"..." Watching the last rational mind succumb to hunger, Sakura sipped her tea and quietly admitted defeat.

A tall, spry young man introduced as Takemori, laughed at the bickering ninjas as he brought another plate with a plethora raw meat, ready to be cooked. "It's alright! Yuko-nee would want to thank you guys properly for saving our family business. She'd be mad at us if we couldn't feed all of you at the very least."

Sakura slumped over the table, too exhausted to argue.

As soon as Kakashi had come for Sakura yesterday afternoon, a messenger frog from Naruto appeared, carrying the message of hunter-nins coming to investigate the battlefield. While the short time interval between the battle and the coming of the hunter-nins were far too coincidental, no questions were asked and no words were exchanged on that matter until they arrived at their destination: Lady Yuko's home.

A sudden downpour, both a blessing and curse, had ambushed the team as they left and had ceased abruptly as they arrived.

To Naruto and Shiro's unconditional delight, Yuko-san's family business was a prominent Korean grill in the village.

Had Sakura not felt like she would keel over any second, she would have wondered why a big business man such as Thompson-sama would care to bother such a relatively small restaurant. And though Sakura was suffering from terminal drowsiness despite her afternoon nap, she did not regret denying Kakashi and (to her surprise) Shiro's profuse offers to carry her. The adamant amount of concern the men had first given Sakura some irritancy which later transformed into suspicion.

When Sakura rose from her seat, the three men were entrenched in a furious warfare of chopsticks for the last piece of meat. It was Shiro who whipped out a fork with his free hand and stole away with the last morsel. Naruto cried foul play and Sasuke pretended not to care as he tilted his chair back and huffed.

"Ah-re? Sakura-chan?" Naruto noticed Sakura walking towards the back of the restaurant with several empty dishes. "Where are you going?"

"Dishes. Then to sleep."

As soon as Sakura disappeared into the kitchen where Takemori insisted that he would do the dishes and Sakura should retire for the night, Kakashi also stood to leave.

"Wait." Sasuke stopped his leader, straightening his chair and setting his feet on the floor. His eyes, however, were not focused on target.

"I want to talk to you."

"…Now?"

"Now." Sasuke arose and headed towards the back door, obviously expecting his addressee to follow suit. Naruto and Shiro watched the tense exchange and exit before the latter stuffed a fish cake into his mouth and motioned to the table.

"Eat leftovers."

"OK."

The pressure of the moment had lifted immediately in favor of food. For some, such complicated matters were better to be left unacknowledged.

————————————————

Both men faced each other as they leaned against the opposite walls between the restaurant and another building. Each emanated either an indifferent or lazy manner. The moon had come out tonight, and for once the rain had stopped.

"So, is it a nighttime interrogation, Sasuke-kun?"

"It was only after the party when you revealed that you and Sakura were married. Before that, you two never shared a room, nor expressed any actions of a relationship outside of a teammate and a leader, and on top of that, neither of you have in possession a ring on any finger." Sasuke began his analysis abruptly and also ended on a slightly awkward note. Relationships were not his forte, and discussing things like marriage was an uncomfortable ordeal, even if it was not his per se.

Kakashi rubbed his chin through his mask in either mock or real contemplation. Sasuke had stopped trying to guess a long time ago and decided that a post facto feeling of embarrassment would suffice in this situation.

"Haa…" Always the slow start. A long pause followed as the Kakashi stared into the night sky. Sasuke closed his eyes; a method of passing time he found to have some merit.

The moon was abnormally bright tonight, illuminating the streets  
brighter than streetlamps and their paltry source of light.

"So you're saying that this whole thing's a setup?"

"…The whole situation just doesn't seem authentic."

Kakashi scratched his head. With the mission going anywhere but forward, there would be no use to keep up this now useless charade. Also, though there were advantages to the fake marriage, most of his reasons were purely for shock and entertainment value.

"'Authentic'…" However, all logical rationales aside, there was a paradoxical aspect to the previous statement. The word was not one that he would use to describe Sakura's current character.

"Sasuke, what would you classify as 'authentic'?" Kakashi posed a question that caught Sasuke off guard. The Uchiha's sharp mind spurred in to action. Underneath the underneath, even when the world was spiraling to a bitter end. It was the Kakashi thing to do.

"Children do become adults," Sasuke said with a smirk. Just because you've stopped growing up doesn't mean we can't. Especially Sakura.

"She always says she's busy, doesn't she?" If you haven't seen her grow up, then how are you so sure the Sakura we see is 'authentic'?

"Does she make time for you?" You could have been the reason why she had been avoiding us for so long.

Kakashi thought back, remembering the odd mishaps between the party and what he remembered of the sake incident. Technically speaking, it was he who inflicted this extended date on Sakura, but that wouldn't stop him from creating questionable innuendos.

"Usually at night. But we don't talk much." Take that statement however you want.

"..." Too much information.

Pushing himself off the wall, Kakashi turned to leave.

"Wait. You still haven't answered—"

"The world doesn't lose an axis once you're married, Sasuke." Kakashi stepped indoors and stopped, remembering a forgotten point.

"What is it?" Sasuke asked, noticing the pause.

Kakashi continued to walk into the store, letting the door slowly set itself back in to place.

"Jewelry is overrated," he said before he disappeared from view and before the knob clicked in to place several seconds later.

————————————————

While the details of how killing Thompson-sama saved this quaint eatery were vague, there was no question that whatever this 'contract' Yuko-san had mentioned before the team was forced to flee was of the malicious sort. Basing several psychological assumptions of that fact, the team would be safe here for the time being.

Sakura groped about the blankets, spreading out the sheets on the floor in a drowsy daze. After putting up a good fight, Takemori-san had shooed Sakura away to the second floor where she found two guest rooms. They were a bit musty, but they had a window, several blankets, and access to a bathroom.

Sprawling contentedly across the thick blanket that served as a mattress, Sakura closed her eyes to enjoy a few minutes of silence before sounds of someone taking off their footwear and the door—her door—sliding open registered distantly in her mind.

"…Kakashi…" There really was no one else who would intrude so openly.

"…Ah," Kakashi replied. She pulled out two blankets, he noted. What increased his amusement was the distance between where he was to sleep and where Sakura was sleeping. The room was not large, but the edges of both blankets were touching opposite walls which left about two meters worth of an empty floor between them.

Sliding the door closed, Kakashi stole across a longer distance than he would have preferred towards his designated plot Sakura had assigned to him.

"Sensei…"

"Ah?" Sakura opened her eyes halfway after the sounds of rustling bed sheets ceased. It was just a thought, a question that she wanted answered even though the next morning she would probably forget his reply in the morning.

"Why are you so insistent on pretending to be married?" Kakashi slowly sat up from his blankets. 'Why'. 'Why' such a troublesome question and Copy Ninja Kakashi was wasn't the one who liked giving straight answers. Though that one-word remark was a vexing query, the number of creative answers he could use as an insufficient answer was infinite as his joy in creating them.

"Well, four men in one room isn't necessarily a sanitary practice." Kakashi heard Sakura give a silent chuckle.

"Sensei's such a glutton for punishment," Sakura mumbled hazily into her pillow.

"Hai, hai." Kakashi pulled his shirt over his head along with his mask. There was no way he would get any sleep tonight. The moon was too bright and the humidity was stifling.

Falling back on to the blanket, Kakashi whipped his shirt in to a corner and lied back down with a groan. Now that his blankets and his mind had quieted down to mingle with the night, he could hear the frogs croaking their scratchy warnings of another bout of rain that was to come in the near future.

"Sakura." His voice was too loud compared to the chorus of frogs coming from the open window.

"Un?" She sighed out. Sakura was sleepy and, in all likelihood, would not be awake after the next five minutes. Despite that, Kakashi contemplated on his next words.

Sakura had become remarkably similar to himself. His problem with withholding information from those close to him had not changed, and somehow this habit had rubbed off on the open and sincere Gennin Sakura. Though he wanted to rid her of this tendency, it was hypocritical of him to expect her to open up when he himself did not plan on revealing any more of himself.

She had broken down once in the mansion, accusing him of thinking she was weak. But that would only serve as leverage to make her even more careful. In other words, Sakura was reinforcing the walls she was building around her, and the only way he could get Sakura to come out of the fortress she had built so meticulously around her for the last several years was to leave his own behind.

But he wasn't sure how to leave. Not when he had been living within his own walls for too long.

"Sensei?" She was still awake. Kakashi threw aside his thoughts and the beginnings of a guilty conscious.

"…Nothing."

————————————————

The night sky began to darken as rain clouds rolled in once again. And with the darkness came four hooded figures donning stark whites masks that contrasted sharply against the dusky colors of their clothing.

"Even if these shinobi were D class criminals, there is no doubt that the two who did this are extremely talented —and  
dangerous—jounin-level shinobi," A wooden mask decorated with jagged, lightning-esque lines running vertically down the whitewashed surface muffled the hunter's voice. Two hunter-nins looked over the carnage lined neatly lined in a wasted town plaza complete with a piece of cloth draped over each face. The winning team had cleaned up the place surprisingly well.

"According to witnesses, only two ninjas finished off a group comprised of thirty ninjas," said the other hunter with triangles  
marking the top, bottom and sides of his mask.

"Could it be the recent missing-nins reported to be from Konoha?" the same shinobi mused to himself as a third shinobi flickered in to view.

"None of the shinobi here has any identification on them. We should remove their masks and—"

"No," the lightning-masked leader ordered. The third turned to the speaker in confusion.

"But how will we be able to identify them?" The triangle-masked hunter argued in confusion. The leader merely placed a tag on each of the cloth covered face.

"'You are not to confirm the identities of any casualties unless there is at least one man left alive. If no one is left alive, destroy the bodies.' That is a direct order from Raikage-sama."

"Raikage-sama!" Why would a Kage intervene with something as insignificant as identifying D or C Class criminals?

"Yes." Unrolling a scroll on the ground before the corpses, the lightning-masked hunter formed a string of seals and pounded his palms on the parchment. Immediately, the bodies became a part of a mass of white flames, sparing the onlookers the gruesome visuals of incineration.

Thirty seconds later, the flames that were burning so brightly were extinguished immediately, leaving nothing but a large black scar in the brick square. The lightning-masked hunter looked to the brightening sky in contemplation.

"Raikage-sama… What is he thinking?"

————————————————

**Author's Notes:**  
I hate Chapter 14. I hate it with an unparalleled passion. But when I read my fanfic, I'm also not happy with the first four chapters, though I'm not sure how I would go about changing them.

Well... I didn't wait for my betas again... So it's possible that this chapter would go under heavy-duty fix-ups in a few days.

However, I felt guilty so I decided to update.

To J: I was under the delusion that vodka was stronger than sake. It's my fault and misunderstanding. And I still can't drink legally (though that doesn't seem to stop some people...)

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Fanartist


	16. Square One

**Chapter XVI: Square One**

Sakura awoke to find Kakashi missing. His bag was still in the room, but his blankets were nowhere in sight, so she decided to prowl about the restaurant. The rhythmic dripping she heard of water falling from a corner of a roof in to a puddle told her that the rain had stopped for this moment. Deciding that this was a good time to take advantage of the ceased rain, Sakura ventured to the top of the building.

There she found a few rays of light and Kakashi.

Tiptoeing across the concrete roof, Sakura jumped up and landed softly behind Kakashi. The sun barely peeked through a tiny sliver of space between two well-placed clouds. Sunlight was a rarity, and even a sparse ray was a welcoming sight. Sakura was glad she woke up early this morning.

"Good morning, sensei," Sakura greeted as she jumped over a puddle and squatted a safe distance away from Kakashi.

"Ah."

He was wearing his mask.

Come to think of it, Kakashi had not removed his mask since the mansion. Not that Sakura had forgotten how he looked like, but she still wanted to see his face again for curiosity's sake. She never cared to seriously observe Kakashi's unmasked face. It was a colossal waste of six years worth of hypothesizing the good, the bad, and the downright nightmarish.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Ah."

"Yeah, the rain stopped last night so I slept pretty well too."

"…Ah."

"Um, are the rest of the guys up yet?"

"They will be soon." An ominous answer.

Sakura bit her lip and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, waiting impatiently for yellow rays to warm her face. Maybe she should wake up Sasuke-kun and Naruto. They might like to see this too.

"Sakura."

"Yeah?"

"Are you pregnant?"

There was a moment of initial shock when the words froze in the air, condensed, then dropped brutally against Sakura's thought processes.

_The hell…?_ A good amount of time had passed before Sakura could find the right words to say.

"_No!_"

"… Is that so…"

The question warped time and space creating a surreal atmosphere, and Sakura could hear an audible buzzing take over her brain before she could wonder if Kakashi was joking or not. Sakura jumped to her feet in frustration. "'Is that so' my ass! How can you ask a lady something like that so bluntly!"

"Can I ask you something else?"

"_Don't avoid the question!_"

"Ah… Did I do anything weird when I was drunk?"

"Eh?" A moment of astonishment made Sakura's foot slip off the edge of the water tank. Kakashi grabbed her arm and pulled her back to safety. Sakura gripped Kakashi's shoulders to steady herself and gave the man a look. She hadn't expected him to ask her that.

"As in back in the mansion?"

"Ah…." Kakashi released Sakura to scratch his head. "Um, I don't remember anything after—"

"Drowning yourself in sake."

"Maa, you say things so negatively, Sakura-kun," Kakashi bantered cautiously. He could see the metaphorical wheels churning in her head which was what he feared would happen. The mischievous twitching of her lips had him concerned enough.

Strangely enough, she quickly sobered up and gave him a straight answer.

"You pretty much went to sleep after saying some nonsense, nothing important or to be concerned with." Sakura gave a toothy grin. "Does that answer your first question, too?"

"…." He never thought the two questions were related to each other in the first place.

"It was only three days ago. We're not _fruit flies_."

"Ah ha ha ha! Well, thanks for being honest." Kakashi returned to watching the sky. Since sunrise goes by quickly, the rays currently peeking though the tiny crevice would disappear soon. The rain would start up again too.

The sun slid under the cover of clouds. Rain dribbled harmlessly from the sky before downpour soaked the two sky-gazers. She heard that in the Cloud country, the sun was a rare sight on any given day. Though the sun was nice, Sakura preferred the rain. With the clouds and precipitation, she wouldn't have to face the heat.

"Ah, it was nice while it lasted," Sakura supposed nostalgically as she looked back to the horizon.

Kakashi turned to leave. "…Yeah."

"Hm?" Sakura felt like she and Kakashi were not talking on the same topic. He had been rather detached since last night, but that wasn't different from the past. Come to think of it, the strangest change was how he was acting since… was it before, after or during the party? Rubbing her forehead, Sakura wondered how the man could be so liberal and yet so subtle in changing his ways.

"Let's go. Everyone should be awake by now."

————————————————

"Alright," Sasuke began, thumping a scroll on the ground and pulling out a yard of paper in one swift motion. "Let's review our mission and what's been going on since we've left Konoha and set our priorities."

Naruto and Shiro sat opposite of Sasuke as he began to write numbers along to top.

"Today's the sixth day of our mission. So far, we've found no information related to out mission." Sasuke wrote 'Mission' vertically under the first number. After all, the mission has been and always was the top priority.

"We'll discuss what which course of action we should take after Kakashi and Sakura comes back." Naruto nodded. Shiro looked strangely at the paper.

"You're writing backwards."

"The second most pressing matter is the fact that we're missing-nins. Even though the fact stands that ninjas don't use 'ga-nu's or 'bu-re-to's to fight or kill, the strained relationship between the Lighting and Fire country will try to start some trouble by blaming the murder on us."

"That's not how you say it."

"We'll probably be hunted by both Leaf and Cloud ninjas," Sasuke continued despite the fact that his right eye was twitching in irritation.

"Depending on the information we gather during this mission we will either be allowed back or banished from Konoha forever. While the two options won't affect the mission at all, I'm guessing that everyone here wants a place to return to."

"Naw, we're gonna come back to Konoha for sure," Naruto insisted. "I still have to fill that gap between the fifth and seventh Hokage."

"Third, which has nothing to do with the mission and happens to be just a really annoying thing are Bloodline Limit hunters." Next to where he had written 'Konoha', Sasuke wrote two large hiragana characters.

"'_Do_'… '_be_'…?" Shiro craned his neck to read the characters properly.

"So far the people who were hired to go after us were wholly incompetent, technology-reliant, strategically challenged, physically inadequate amateurs from a weird country." Naruto offered his condolences to a desolate Shiro in a form of a pat on the back.

"Because of this, all we have to do is detect an abnormal flow in chakra. Since these guys have no knowledge of chakra, their flow tends to be chaotic. An easier way to spot them is their height. They're a bit on the tall side."

"I have a question!" Shiro exclaimed. "How's my chakra?"

"You've done some training," a third voice remarked. The three men turned around to see Kakashi climbing in to the room. "You have some potential to use ninja techniques."

"Sensei's getting water everywhere," Naruto stated distastefully as he scooted away to escape any stray drops of water.

"Ah, I went for a walk." Kakashi leaned over the list Sasuke had created, dark spots appearing on the paper where the water fell from his head. "What's this?"

"Just discussing our priorities. And speaking of priorities…" Sasuke tapped 'Mission' with his pen.

"How will we be able to gather information on this if we're missing-nins? We failed to establish relevant connections to the Raikage, and anyone working inside any hidden village is now our enemy."

"We'll have to go directly to the Raikage."

"Eh!" Shiro and Naruto cried out. The door slid open once again and Sakura entered, rubbing her hair dry with a towel. She arrived in time to hear her leader's plan.

"'Directly to the Raikage'?" What kind of boorish method were these men scheming again? Sakura scoffed at the prospect of running head-on with the enemy. "So what, we're gonna ask him in person?"

Kakashi rubbed his cloth-covered chin with a thumb.

"If all goes well."

Sakura's jaw went slack. She looked around for support and instead saw, with horror, that no one was joining her opposition.

"You're all insane! How are you—" Sakura cut short. She had forgotten that Shiro was not exactly a part of their team. Giving him the details of their mission would endanger him and the team.

That also meant—

"As far as resources go," Sasuke cut in, seizing a scroll materialized from a puff of smoke. "That's why you have us."

"And as far as planning goes," Naruto said with a toothy grin, "That's why we have Sakura-chan!"

————————————————

Once Sakura had made clear that she and Kakashi had exchange nothing more than a few thorny experiences rather than rings, Sasuke was voted out of the so-called Bachelor's Pad for the following reasons:

First, everyone agreed that the Copy Ninja's interest in undignified literature would endanger Sakura. ("Thanks for the vote of confidence.")

Second, Naruto's bedside manners were terrible. ("Doesn't everyone sleep with kunai under their pillow?")

Third, nobody trusted Shiro in that situation. ("Hey!")

And thus Sakura found Sasuke sitting next to her with a large, white rice paper screen between them.

He was as solemn and deliberate as ever, immediately requesting for anything that could be used as a wall for the time being. Paranoia must have hit hard, since he went as far as securing a portion of the screen with wires and shuriken. Maybe the rumors that Sasuke had gotten himself a girlfriend was much closer to the truth than anyone had expected.

"Sakura," Sasuke called out suddenly, tossing a box over the makeshift barrier. "Catch."

"Ah!" Sakura cried out in surprise as she fumbled with the box. Taking a firm grip, she peered at the label.

"'Burgundy'," she read out loud. "You bought me hair dye?"

"No." Sasuke sensed Sakura turning to look at him through the papered panels. He stood to leave the room.

"We're helping Takemori and his family while we're here. Your hair color is too conspicuous if you plan to help out. And along with the dye, Kakashi told me to give this back to you." Sensei? Kakashi-sensei bought the dye?

Sasuke waved a long black senbon in front of Sakura's face. She picked the needle delicately from the Uchiha's fingers as he slipped out of the room. Looking blankly at the strange color of the familiar object, Sakura's curiosity piqued.

_After successfully rendering his case immobile, Kakashi wrapped his arms around Sakura's waist and pulled her into a tight embrace. Removing the senbon supporting her damp hair, he weaved his fingers into her hair and gently tilted her head to murmur into her ear._

_"We'll have to move out tonight. Our cover's been blown and it's apparent that someone's trying to hunt us down."_

That time… it wasn't as bad as she pretended it had been.

BAM! Sakura rammed her head into the wall.

Wasn't as bad my ass, she thought. It was horrible. It was worse than Naruto succeeding the name of Hokage via The Ultimate Perverted Jutsu™.

"Absolutely horrible! The worst!" Sakura ranted, not sure if she was talking about Naruto or Kakashi. It didn't matter anyways. Her opinion of whatever imaginary situation she had set them in was still the same.

From outside, Sasuke had heard the loud bang and exclamation on his way downstairs. The sound was acknowledged only with a hesitant step before he continued to walk down the stairwell. Sakura had become remarkably energetic lately.

————————————————

In return for their hospitality, the team catered to Takemori-san's restaurant. It turned out that Yuko-san had a total of four brothers; Takemori was the youngest and the only brother below Yuko-san. When Naruto was informed of this fact, his eyes glossed over. Five siblings. It was like having your own personal sports team.

Sasuke had traveled with Tsunade to visit the Raikage on one occasion to prepare for this mission, even though he had no clue why the Hokage would tell him to memorize every nook and cranny of the Hidden Cloud's headquarters.

"Hyuu" Shiro draped himself over the backrest of a red wooden chair, completely exhausted from fighting against a flood of customer demands. Sasuke walked over and set a can of juice on the man's back.

"Yo, Shiro."

"Hm?" The gunman reached toward the strangely-place beverage and straightened up when he had the beverage was in his grasp. Sasuke slumped down in a chair nearby and crossed his arms.

"Is your father from where that Thompson-person is from?"

"Because of my last name 'Bradford'? Naw, I made that up for financial purposes."

"Financial purposes?"

"I came from a country where people like us are a minority. Though I'd like to think of the job market as an unprejudiced institution, it's just an illusion. I actually went by 'Shawn Bradford'. 'Shiro's my given name."

"Then your last name is…"

"I'll tell you mine after I know yours."

Ah. Come to think of it they were never introduced properly.

"Uchiha. Uchiha Sasuke."

"Yamimura Shiro."

"Paradoxical."

"My parents were from the Hidden Cloud Village, if it helps you to understand. Neither of my parents were ninjas, though."

"Shiro…" Sasuke leaned forward as if he was asking something of personal nature. "Are your parents dead?"

"No."

"Did they abuse you?"

"Not in a malicious sense, never."

"Do you suffer from terminal angst?"

"…What kind of interrogation is this?"

"Ah, it's just…" Sasuke coughed. It was an embarrassing thing to talk about, even though he had nothing to do with them. Probably. Hopefully.

"Sometimes a self-declared ninja with a strange name or hairstyle comes by every one in a while. It seems to be mandatory that these schizophrenics claim to be related to me or Kakashi. Thankfully, they disappear after some time." Taking a sip from his can, Sasuke slumped back into this chair.

"I wonder what part of 'only survivor of the Uchiha massacre' they don't understand," Sasuke mused to no one in particular. He himself had no idea who 'they' were, but he wished 'they' would stop reviving the most exasperating members of his deceased clan.

Shiro contemplated for a moment. Mysterious. Psychotic. Fashionably challenged. Abruptly ephemeral existence. There was an explanation for all this.

"They must've fallen into a plot hole."

Sasuke shrugged. As long as it made sense.

————————————————

Yamimura: Dark/Black village, according to my limited Fangrrl Nihongo.

Shiro: White

————————————————

**Author's Notes**  
decided to pack this fic with defunct plot devices, because many—if not all—plot devices do not work for this pairing.

The party arc has the most obvious ones. There are more floating out there I've added inadvertently. Either way, they don't work.

Yes, I'm still planning on comtinuing this. I have a week of break in March. I'll spend some time writing then. Right now, I have a comic to submit for my college

"Fanartist"


	17. Alone

**Chapter XVII: Alone**

Two weeks after he and Team Seven first settled in Yuko-san's restaurant, Shiro awoke to find the room empty. Any baggage that did not belong to him had disappeared, and everything had been impeccably cleaned up and put back into place.

Shiro slid the door open and peeked out to see Enoki, the eldest of the five siblings and the unspoken manager of the restaurant, coming up the stairwell.

"Oh, you're finally awake. You should wake up the others too."

"Wait, wait a sec." Shiro leaned further against the doorframe. "They're not downstairs?"

"Hm," Enoki mused as he lit up a cigarette. He took a slow drag and exhaled. "Well then, since they're gone, I should give you this."

"This…?" Shiro watched as Enoki pulled a scroll from his pant pocket and hand him the roll of paper. Once the letter was in Shiro's possession, Enoki stalked back down the stairs.

"If you have nowhere to go you can stay here for the time being," were the manager's last words before disappearing downstairs. Shiro didn't hear him as he read the collaborative letter.

_Oi, Shiro!  
Don't feel bad because we left you out, OK? Come to Konoha sometime (Just go south and you'll get there)! Well, I don't know what to write, so I'll leave the rest to Sasuke!  
— Naruto_

Despite Naruto's cheerful efforts to console the abandoned gunman, Shiro felt somewhat betrayed. Maybe reading Sasuke's message would clarify the situation and offer subtle comfort.

_You're annoying.  
— Sasuke_

He hurried on to Sakura's message.

_Shiro,   
We found out that you didn't have enough money to go back home, so we bought you a ticket to the port nearest to your house._

_Even though it doesn't seem like it, Sasuke probably trusts you the most out of all of us. Don't let his message get to you. I also got you some new clothes so that you wouldn't stand out so much. Travel safely.  
— Sakura_

Shiro felt warm and fuzzy. Sakura was such a nice person. Even though she was a bit tactless… a little loud… constantly ill-tempered…

Well, she was still a nice person. Better than Sasuke.

Kakashi's message was the most informative and gave him an uneasy feeling.

_Shiro;   
Get out of the country quickly. We can't guarantee that we won't kill you the next time you're hired from someone in this country. Also, burn this scroll as soon as possible._

_I've written down the directions to the nearest port. I hope we can meet again in the future.  
— Kakashi_

Shiro leaned against the wall. What to do, what to do.

Life had become complicated.

————————————————

Infiltration of the Hidden Cloud Village would have to wait until dusk, and with two hours of meager light filtering through the sky, the team decided to spend an hour in a nearby settlement before entering the village. The plan was to regroup before breaking into headquarters.

For the sake of discretion, Kakashi divided the group in half. Sakura would go around with Naruto while he and Sasuke would move separately. Sakura drowned any emotions that threatened to emerge.

Kakashi wouldn't try to avoid me, she reasoned to herself. This was just strategy. Just strategy. Totally understandable.

Though she could understand it through a knowledgeable level, Sakura found that the problem with this reasoning was that she had to constantly remind herself how rational and reasonable Kakashi's actions were. Despite the fact that something inside her would not believe her rationale.

With luck, however, hanging out with Naruto proved to be entertaining and much more fun than any event that had happened since the mission began.

"Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan! What should I get Hinata?" Sakura laughed as she watched Naruto agonizing over gifts in front of a crowd of stuffed toys.

Sure, Naruto had Hinata. But the catch was that he still had not realized to what extent his feelings were toward the shy Hyuuga. No one had asked him about the issue, thus he had never thought about it.

So Sakura decided that she should be the first to ask.

"Naruto, what are your feelings toward Hinata?"

"Eh?" Naruto had wandered toward a crane game and was looking intensely at a suspiciously familiar doll of a stuffed pig before Sakura called him.

"My feelings…?" Slipping a coin into the slot, Naruto mused to himself while wielding the crane with ease. The pig was would require emptying his wallet. He'd settle for the rabbit. "I like her."

"Is it just 'like'?" Sakura pressed teasingly.

"Hum…" Naruto pressed down on a button that lowered the crane and thought a little longer. The doll thudded softly into the tray. Finding his answer, Naruto gave Sakura a wide, innocent smile that meant he still did not understand the question.

"I like her a lot!" Sakura had forgotten how subtly not only lost on Naruto, but was non-existent on these kinds of topics. She should get straight to the point.

"Is she your girlfriend?"

"Girlfriend?" Naruto blinked. Holding out his prize at arm's length, he stared at it in deep thought.

————————————————

"Girlfriend?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Where did you hear that?"

Kakashi twirled around his dango. For some reason, Sasuke had been staring at it intensely since he bought it. "Just from here and there. I was curious to know if Lady-Killer Sasuke really did settle down with a creature of the female race."

"… Don't have one."

"Hmm?" Kakashi dragged out his cynical hum a little longer than usual. The two men walked in silence before Sasuke decided he should do something about Kakashi's suspicions.

"What?"

"With your reputation, I can understand why you're hiding her…"

"I'm not hiding anyone."

"…but is it necessary to wait until she gets plastic surgery?"

Sasuke twitched. "She's not ugly."

"Hm."

Sasuke realized his blunder rather belatedly. Savagely gulping down the last of his coffee, Sasuke rammed the can into the nearest garbage disposal.

"Don't tell anyone," he mumbled.

"Hai, hai."

————————————————

"Eh…what qualifies as a girlfriend…" Sakura was stuck. Naruto had some good questions about girlfriend and boyfriend relationships. She already established love, but Naruto asked what the difference was between loving a girl as a friend as opposed to a girlfriend.

Then she asked about dating, but Naruto couldn't seem to see the difference between a friendly meeting with friends and an actual date. After awhile, Sakura couldn't tell the difference either.

She asked him if he felt like he would rather die than leave her, and Naruto made it clear that he did not send a shadow replication on this mission.

The two hadn't even held hands, so physical contact was not an issue.

"Sakura-chan, you've been married, right? You and Kakashi-sensei didn't act that different from any other time."

"We did _not_ get married!" Sakura hollered a bit too defensively. Naruto chuckled nervously and held up both hands to appease her anger.

But she never thought about what would happen after the glamour wore away. Would everything become mundane and routine again? Where would this thing called 'love' fit in when the dust settled and the amour faded?

Sakura sighed. Back in her academy and pre-chuunin exam days, Sakura had often glorified and fantasized over weddings. The dresses, the atmosphere, the romance… Romance. What a tacky word.

"But _sang-kyuu_, Sakura-chan."

"Eh?" Back in reality, Sakura saw Naruto raising the stuffed rabbit he won into the darkening sky. After a few seconds, he broke into his trademark grin.

"I'll think about those things."

Sakura smiled ruefully. She needed to think about these things too.

"Ne ne, Sakura-chan? What are your feelings toward Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked right back at Sakura. It was an exasperating question, but it was expected. Sakura had so much to say on this topic, but most things Team Seven were already intimately acquainted with. She should start with something new and positive for once.

"He's like an older brother."

"Heh?" Naruto drawled, narrowing his eyes in doubt. "Not like a grandpa?"

"He's too strange and immature for me to think like that."

"Nya ha ha ha! That's true! You're always the one telling him off when he's trying to be cool." A look of curiosity came over Naruto's face. The 'older brother' thing didn't seem to fit Sakura's natural answer. "Does sensei think like that too?"

"Hm? Yeah, he even told me that I was like a little sister to him. It's nothing beyond feeling like a family."

"Um… Huh…" Naruto plopped the rabbit doll on his head pensively.

"But when you get married, don't you become a family? So wouldn't the family feeling be the same when you're married?" The answer shocked Sakura. She never thought of it that way. Naruto's naïveté was terrifyingly observant on some occasions.

"W-well, there are some differences… like you, Naruto! You're like a little brother to me, but I wouldn't marry a guy like you!" Sakura blurted out quickly. Naruto deflated, giving Sakura's brain time to flounder about the unexpectedly vast, uncharted waters of Naruto-Think.

Naruto never had a family, so it was natural for him to be confused over these kinds of relationships. But did Kakashi think this way too? How was she going to face him after hearing Naruto's observation? Was she thinking too much? But Kakashi was not the kind of person who would state these kinds of things so obviously… What would happen if Naruto's kind of logic was how Kakashi thought too?

Moreover, why couldn't Naruto grow up like an average guy who became uncomfortable on the topic of long-term relationships? Everything that happened up to the last time she and Kakashi talked in private on the roof of the restaurant could have been just a strange string of memories.

But now it was much more. Too much more. It was as if Kakashi-sensei harbored feels that extended beyond a leader and subordinate.

Sakura squeezed her eyes, attempting to short out the thousand thoughts invading her mind. It was strange to have him so close to her for those few short days they had pretended to be a couple.

Everything would have been so much more simplified if it was just a memory.

————————————————

A hunter-nin sat fiddling with his lightning bolt patterned mask on the steps of the main entrance. The hallways of the Hidden Cloud Village's headquarters were dimly lit by a row of hastily lighted lanterns. No one was allowed near the Raikage's office until his meeting was over.

His recent mission had baffled him. It went against all international policies to eliminate any ninja without confirming identification. While these issues were nothing abnormal during wartime or in discreet operations that took place outside of one's country, there was something wrong. Starting with the fact that he found evidence of heavy manipulation of lightning jutsus, and that witnesses advocated the fact that a huge blast of fire created the crater in the center of the plaza.

The hunter flipped open a small notebook. There was only one clan—or person, rather—who knew how to use such a powerful fire jutsu. According to rumor, the sole Uchiha survivor had double-crossed then returned to Konoha six years ago. Biting thoughtfully on the spine of the book, the hunter meditated on his facts a little longer.

Had the Uchiha become mutinous once again? But what was with the Raikage and his strange orders?

"Tsuru? I heard from my secretary that you were waiting for me."

Tsuru immediately jumped to his feet as his ultimate superior approached his way. "Raikage-sama, I apologize for questioning your orders, but I have something to ask about my mission."

A man behind the Raikage who was trailing several servants caught Tsuru's eye. The man looked familiar, but Tsuru had trouble matching a name or any kind of label to the face.

"Ah, let me introduce you to Doro-sama. He owns the second largest trading company in the Lightning country."

Grateful that Raikage-sama had filled in the blanks, Tsuru bowed to the man in recognition.

"Tsuru, I'm sorry I can't talk to you right now. There is something I need to confirm with Doro-san. However…" the Raikage gripped Tsuru's shoulders earnestly. "I'm in a situation where I need the trust of everyone in the village. Can I ask that you trust me at this time?"

Tsuru blinked and nodded dumbly in response. Satisfied with his response, his superior smiled and beckoned Doro-sama to follow.

Sighing, Tsuru scratched his head in frustration. A situation, eh… Tsuru had no idea what was going on, but even if he did, he had a feeling that nothing he would do could be of any impact at this point.

He would put his trust in the Raikage for now.

————————————————

The sun had set long ago and the time set for infiltration had come.

Kakashi untied the band that had served as a temporary eye patch. At this time, Sakura and Naruto would be breaking in through the Second Gate at the Southeast entrance. He and Sasuke would enter through the Fourth Gate at the Southeastern entrance.

"Kakashi."

Kakashi raised his head. Sasuke had been silent for the whole evening, and he had not expected him to engage in conversation before such a critical time.

"I think you and Sakura…are the same."

"Ha?" Kakashi replied swiftly. "Where did you get an idea like that?"

Sasuke did not reply. But what he thought was strange about Kakashi's tenacity to the concept of teamwork was that the man could only apply the concept in battle. Sakura was not as disproportionate, she was getting there.

Sasuke closed his eyes and smirked. Worrying about his team like this… Times had certainly changed.

Kakashi, unable to look through Sasuke's mind, took the latter's silence and smirk as a sign that the topic was dismissed for the time being.

Slowly opening his eyes, three dots spun experimentally around his red irises. He had not used the Sharingan for the last two weeks.

"Let's go."

Infiltration had begun.

————————————————

**Author's Notes:  
**It's the Hidden Village of OC! But I can't help it. It's not like there were any notable characters from the Cloud country. However, I will attempt to give these new characters their own individual characteristics and make them believable.

I found that Shiro means either 'castle' or 'white' depending on the context. I believe 'shiroi' is an adjective.

I named the guy 'mud' on purpose, for those who know Japanese. I think it fits him.

And yes, late chapter. I know. I need a hiatus.

I trust that all you people enjoyed my last update, yes?

Fanartist

————————————————


	18. Fog of War

**Chapter XVIII: Fog of War  
**

"Tsuru-senpai, I'm going first, so make sure you lock up."

Tsuru grunted a reply through the wooden stamp he held in his mouth. The door closed and the hunter was soon to be the only person within the headquarter. Since his encounter with the mountain of bodies, he had been assigned mountain loads of paperwork. As the leader of a rookie squad of hunters, it was his duty to finish their paperwork until they fully comprehended the entire process that could cause the greatest threat to a shinobi's career: Carpel tunnel.

Switching the brush for the stamp, Tsuru pounded a splotchy seal of authentication on the last piece of paper.

He leaned back in his chair to alleviate his spine. Now that he was finished…

Tsuru glanced at the clock. It was late, which meant that he could go about freely. And if he could go about freely, he could get some more information on the strange orders he had been receiving lately. He also wanted to know what business the owner of the second-largest trading company had with the leader of a military institution. It was not a common practice for hired mercenaries to become acquainted in a client's personal affairs.

Slipping a notebook out of his pocket, he flipped open to a dog-eared page.

He said that he would put his trust in his leader, but he could narrow this down by having faith that the Raikage was not doing anything illegal.

Tonight he would busy himself with a little… exclusive research.

————————————————

"Sakura-chan is harder to see ever since she colored her hair."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Sakura and Naruto landed gingerly on a concrete post that lined the headquarters of the Hidden Cloud. So far, so good. They would allow five minutes max for Sasuke-kun and Kakashi-sensei to take care of anyone left in the building. As far as they knew, they had not been detected. Ironically, Naruto's stealth had become one of his greatest assets over the years, though his excessive verbosity had not changed.

She and Naruto were going to go straight to the secretary's office and meet Sasuke-kun on the way for any urgent information that needed to be exchanged. Kakashi would continue to make rounds. After five minutes, radio contact would be established. If they found the information they were searching for, radio contact would cease and the two teams would separate and regroup back within the borders of the Fire Country.

If there was no information, then the team was doomed to a life of either an expatriate or fugitive for the rest of their days. Naruto declared that there was always another way out, but Sakura held to her doubts.

…Now she really had nothing to think about. The other things Sakura could think about was not something she would want swimming through her mind, but nevertheless, they surfaced.

Sakura found herself wondering if Kakashi was as transparent as she thought, making such a plan that left no chance for her to talk to her idiot of a leader for an indefinite amount of time.

She wondered if he had selected two-man teams because he did not want to be so close to her. Sensei was either too complicated or too blasé on human relationships, and Sakura had a hard time choosing which option fit the situation.

She also wondered why five minutes could last so much longer than an hour when one had complicated things to think through.

————————————————

Sasuke would have liked to have Byakugan's ability to look through walls, but looking a few seconds into the future would suffice for the time being.

He and Kakashi had three more minutes to ensure some time for Sakura and Naruto to gather information and high-tail it out. The best worst case scenario was that the Raikage was still about and the most important part of their mission would be postponed indefinitely.

Kakashi jumped up an empty stairwell and confirmed it to be secure.

Godaime-sama made such a rash bet, he thought as he turned a corner and ran down another hallway. The battle between Naruto's notorious good luck and Hokage-sama's Legendary Loser status had begun a long time ago, and the outcome would be revealed tonight.

————————————————

Tsuru held a small flashlight in his mouth as he shuffled through a stack of hanging files.

Other than a sudden influx of A and B missions assigned, there were no strange mission reports or papers from any governmental institution or official.

Damn, I wish Raikage-sama would get a better secretary, Tsuru cursed as he shifted the flashlight between his teeth. If he wasn't careful, he would end up with some unnecessary salivating.

No one really knew the exact reason Raikage-sama never considered firing his current secretary. He was irresponsible, unorganized, perverted and had been in office for the last fifteen years. Tsuru decided that the man was of some kind of service to the Raikage. Maybe the Raikage was a closet pervert and needed a scapegoat?

Tsuru stopped his shuffling and lingered on that theory.

It was plausible.

————————————————

Five minutes.

A pine branch nodded in an irregular wind. And nothing else.

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In the midst of shuffling papers, Tsuru's hand twitched. Though he did not sense any kind of presence, there was a prickling in his spine that told him to run and hide.

He had no time to rearrange the papers. Urgency hit his senses so hard that he did not bother to do anything but jump in to a large cabinet and conceal his presence.

The door creaked open. Sakura and Naruto slipped in the room Sasuke had specified. Tsuru reached for a shuriken

"The Raikage should really fire his secretary," Naruto muttered as Sakura moved briskly toward the desk and immediately began to shuffle through the papers. From the closet, Tsuru tensed to make his move.

Naruto jerked upright, nearly making Tsuru reveal his presence. Sakura also stiffened as audio streamed from the headphones.

"The Raikage!"

"Why is he coming here at this hour!"

Then why are you guys here at this hour, Tsuru retorted cynically in his mind. He played out the next several minutes in his mind. The two shinobi would be caught exiting the room. The Raikage, being one of the most powerful entities of a major Hidden Village, would finish them off with one semi-powerful jutsu. They really didn't seem to be too tough. Especially the spiky headed one. This would be a good chance to see some good Kage action.

The closet doors whipped open to snap Tsuru out of his reverie.

"What the—?" The spiky-headed ninja was cut off as he was pushed hastily into the closet and was followed by another body that crushed Tsuru to the side.

The ruckus ended abruptly as stealth was, unfortunately, a higher priority compared to comfort. Tsuru found his knee crushed to the back wall and someone's hair smashed in to his face as he heard the door open and saw the lights flicker from the crack between the hinges.

"Who the hell are you?" was the question that was throbbing so deafeningly in the air that Tsuru wondered how the Raikage could be oblivious of their presence. This, without doubt, the most unprofessional situation he had encountered since he once had to substitute a teammate's presence with a cardboard cut-out for several minutes back in his gennin days. While that situation had passed with surprisingly minimal negative results, Tsuru was not sure if he would be able to escape unscathed in his current situation.

Meanwhile, Sakura and Naruto were completely discombobulated due to the fact that they were sharing a refuge with an enemy.

Tsuru's attention eventually shifted to the world outside as two… no, three people entered. Well, not in the closet, but indoors (why was he correcting his own thoughts?).

He could recognize the Raikage and… and what's-his-name from that morning. Some important guy. Anyways, it was him, the Raikage, and someone with no shinobi training.

"You're contribution has been of great appreciatiation, Doro-san." Raikage's voice and the sound of an opening drawer were heard clearly through the thin barriers. There was a crinkling of a large envelope and a thud of paper landing on the wooden desk.

"You need to get a new secretary."

"Someday. Ah, here are the results." For several excruciating minutes, there was nothing but the sound of flipping papers Tsuru felt the intruder's hair ticking his nostrils as he breathed in. He wanted to sneeze.

"Ho, the Sharingan has more potential than I thought."

Tsuru stopped himself from snorting hair in surprise. Naruto's face tightened. Sakura felt something squeeze her chest. How many people were after the Sharingan?

Tsuru's chest constricted and he found his heart clinging desperately to his faith in Raikage-sama. Suddenly he didn't want to uncover anymore facts than he had found. He wanted to be content with digging in futility. He didn't want a reason to turn against the man he respected.

"And what of the experiment?"

"Stable. You've already seen the archetype this morning…" They were leaving. As the voices faded, Naruto and Sakura was ready to pounce on Tsuru who was preparing to bolt.

One. Two. Three.

_Bam!_ Tsuru rammed the door open, catching Naruto and Sakura on his way and creating a knot of struggling bodies on the floor. Everything stopped when something cold and thin grazed Tsuru's throat.

Naruto sat on Tsuru. A crude, yet effective method to keep his hostage from escaping. Meanwhile, Sakura turned her radio back on.

"Sasuke-kun? "

"What happened? Did the Raikage do anything noteworthy?" Sakura raised an eyebrow. To her surprise, it was Kakashi's voice that streamed over the radio. Funny, she thought. Since when were we back on speaking terms?

"You're not Sasuke-kun."

"Oh? You've forgotten my voice already, _honey_?" Kakashi answered back in lighthearted innocence.

Sakura's hand twitched in mild irritation. As innocent as those bred by demon spawn, she thought. But to her credit, this was not the time to be hung up on trivial matters.

"He's after the Sharingan. And apparently there's someone helping him out. Other than that, we have someone else spying on the Raikage too."

Naruto patted Tsuru's head as he stuck the hunter mask he found on his head. "Oi, what's a hunter-nin doing here?"

"Uh?" Tsuru's voice was stuffy from the weight that flattened his chest to the floor. "I was doing research."

"Really?" Naruto pulled a book from Tsuru's pocket and flipped through the pages.

"H-hey!" Tsuru struggled to recover his book but was foiled by Naruto's foot plastering his skull back against the floor.

"Y'know, it's not good for you or the book if you chew on the binding," Naruto advised as he skimmed through the book. There were notes and some sketches scattered here and there about different missions and what read like thoughts and opinions on various situations. A name scrawled at the top of a dog-eared page caught Naruto's attention.

"Sakura-chan, come here for a sec." Sakura walked over from the desk and flashed a light to see the page.

"That's the town we stopped by after we left after that Thompson-guy died."

On the other side of the wire, Sasuke listened intently. Kakashi took it up on himself to be the main watchman.

Sakura glanced at Naruto, then to Tsuru. "So... you were there the night we were at that town?"

"…Yeah." Tsuru coughed. This guy was heavy. "If you get off me, I'll tell you why I'm shuffling around here."

Naruto looked at Sakura. She shrugged. He seemed pretty intent on gathering information, considering that he was also hiding in the Raikage's closet. Chances were that he wouldn't attack them until he had enough information to act, but whether they should believe this man's report or should even allow him to live were choices they had to gamble with.

Naruto watched as Tsuru pushed himself off the floor and asked, "So why were you in the closet?" Tsuru felt a kunai held firmly against the his throat and decided that attempting to lessen the volitile nature of his situation would backfire. This would be a game of balencing diplomacy with two-way interrogation techniques.

"First of all, who are you? Where are you from?"

Naruto glanced at Sakura, wondering how he should answer the question. Sakura stepped in to the intellectual battlefield.

"Konoha."

"Why are there Konoha ninja in the Lightning country?"

"We wouldn't be here if the borders hadn't closed down so suddenly."

""Suddenly"?" Tsuru repeated. Sakura took note of Tsuru's confusion and continued on.

"While we were on a mission, the borders of the Lightning country suddenly closed down while there was still two weeks left in our mission contract." Planting her hands on her hips, Sakura looked up at Tsuru defiently.

"If the borders were to close, the Raikage would be informed of our mission as according to the agreement between the Leaf and Cloud fifteen years ago. With that, there would have been a notice at _least _a five days in advance. However..." Sakura leaned over to narrow her eyes at Tsuru. "We never heard a word about this from the Raikage's secretary, and it was from Ma'dam X from the Land of Anonimity that I found everything was all set and done post-facto."

Tossing her hair, Sakura went a few paces before firing another diplomatic bullet.

"With facts like that, it becomes obvious why we decided to investigate the Raikage."

Tsuru sighed. I looked like he pretty much owed these people what he had found.

"It had been about a month since I've been assigned to patrol the min-north-eastern coastal area. We heard that there were missing-nins who had murdered a lord and later massacred approximately thirty unidentified shinobi. When we went to inspect the damages, we were also given orders not to identify the shinobi."

"Wait!" Sakura's cut into Tsuru's story, "That's a breech of international and domestic policy!"

Sasuke's eyebrows knitted together as pieces began falling into place. Kakashi had also noticed a pattern with Tsuru's report.

"Anything else you've found before we came in? Like some kind of weapon or something..." Naruto trailed off in his attemp at subtlty.

Tsuru scratched his head. "Nothing really. There's been more A and B missions than usual starting from two weeks ago."

Sakura took a deep breath and exhaled with exasperation. So much for going back home.

"Looks like there really was nothi—"

"Wait." Sasuke's voice stopped all three shinobi as his command rang clearly through the air. His mind was churning with everything that had happened since the borders closed as he began to see a reason forming though the chaos of their haphazard mission.

_"There's been more A and B missions than usual starting from two weeks ago." _

"_No identifying village. Could mean that a Kage's behind this." Sasuke's eyes swirled red as he reached into his pack and twirled about his Fuuma shuriken._

"_Ho, the Sharingan has more potential than I thought."_

Click. The last piece fell in to place.

"The Raikage killed thirty of his own shinobi to test the Sharingan."

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**Author's Notes:**  
…Bleach and college. That's what's keeping me busy. I blame the ichiruki LJ community. And also the fact that I couldn't figure out my password all this time.

Still on hiatus. Haven't read Naruto for the past month or so. Don't look forward to updates. It'll only hurt you.

If you didn't understand Sasuke and Kakashi's banter about Sasuke's girlfriend, I say that you're too young to read this fic.

Also: Tsuru Crane

"Fanartist"


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